As this past weekend proved, fireworks remain the most American thing you can do with your Independence Day. It doesn’t matter if you can’t even see them because it’s only 8 p.m. and the sun doesn’t set for another hour, someone will be so excited by what John Oliver calls “sparkly guns you can fire in the sky” that they’ll set them off anyway just to hear them make their slight screams and upsetting-to-dogs-everywhere pops. But what is it about fireworks—and many of the other Fourth of July festivities—that make them quite so compelling, considering their potential for, well, blowing up in the faces of those planning them?
I mean, sure, there’s historical precedent behind fireworks being at the center of most people’s July 4th celebrations. The very first Independence Day featured fireworks, as did George Washington’s inauguration, making the very idea of shooting off fireworks seem pretty damn American, thank you very much. But if historical accuracy were the deciding factor for most holiday celebrations, Wikipedia would have no reason to list “family reunions” or “baseball games” as traditional July 4 activities, but yet it does.
That said, family reunions are safer ways to spend your holiday than messing around with fireworks. (After all, your aunt might not approve of your career, but her disdain is hardly likely to result in you losing an eyebrow.) And that’s just the beginning. Independence Day is chock full of ways to hurt yourself over the course of a long weekend—and if you have a camera/smartphone handy, make a Reddit-ready viral video or Vine. Here are just a few ways Fourth of July festivities could go wrong, presented by the quick videographers who were there to catch them.
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