I spent hours last night watching the July 4th fireworks.  I took these photos off the TV set.  It again occurred to me that these displays are blatantly terrible for the environment.  Why do current air pollution laws allow this to happen? We can begin by blaming the Chinese .  They accidentally invented fireworks  around 200 BC.  The story goes that it took them another millennium for an alchemist to mix sulfur, charcoal and potassium, and again accidentally, invent gunpowder, which became the major ingredient for fireworks and bullets. The records are not totally clear, but enter Great Britain around 1600 when King James II's firemaster was awarded knighthood for developing modern fireworks.  I again as yesterday  quote John Adams  on this 2July1776 letter to his wife Abigail: "This day will be most memorable in the history of America," he predicted. "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival... It o

The oldest person in the world today is Kane Tanaka at the age of 118 years.  That's her when 20 in 1923. The USA is more than twice as old, for today we celebrate our 245th birthday.  Mind you, this is not particularly elderly, for the  top six  are: #1  Egypt  8000 years old #2  India  5300 #3  Afghanistan  5000 #4  China 4091 #5  Georgia  3700 #6  Ethiopia  3000  ( their  monarchy  lasted more than 700 hundred years until 1974 when Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974) the British monarchy is going strong at 1200 years so is the one in  Japan for 2700 years The USA is also not the first democracy.  Five thousand years ago  Mesopotamia  invented written language and had a primitive form of democracy.  Some say that around 3000 years ago  India  actually formed republics which practiced democracy.  Greece had that Athens versus Sparta rivalry 2600 years ago, where the story is that democratic Athens lost to war-like Sparta.  Turns out that  Sparta  might actually have been more d