Kaboom: Fireworks Malfunction Turns San Diego 4th of July "Nuclear"

San Diego's annual 4th of July "Big Bay Boom" was just exactly that this year, after a malfunction turned the celebratory event "supernova"!

In one incredible moment, all of the fireworks being carried on three separate barges on the city's ocean front ignited at one time, creating a spectacular and thunderous explosion that sent enormous mushroom clouds into the sky! From certain angles around the city (for a few scary moments), it looked as if the city was under a nuclear attack. The massive explosion created a deafening blast that shattered nearby windows and caused the entire ground to shake, which was felt miles away. An intense blast of heat quickly followed the explosion.

So many of the explosives ignited at once, the display—meant to last for almost an hour—ended up being only a few minutes long. Hundreds of thousands of people who had lined up hours before the event began once the sun set were left hugely disappointed by the truncated annual fireworks display.

Garden State Fireworks, the New Jersey-based company that was hired for the fireworks display, is blaming a timing signal sent to the four barges in the harbor which triggered a simultaneous detonation of all of the fireworks on three of barges.

 Fortunately, no one was injured in the powerful blast. 

Happy Birthday, America: New Copy of Rare American "Birth Certificate" Discovered

A copy of an extremely rare 500-year-old map that depicts a strange new continent called "America" as a small, boomerang-shaped island has been discovered between the pages of a book in Germany.

The map, drawn by the famous German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller, is credited as the first document to attach the name "America" to the New World. It was thought that Waldseemueller had only made four copies of the American "birth certificate" until the recent discovery of the fifth copy amid the pages of an unrelated 19th century manuscript on geometry at the Munich University Library.

Waldseemuller named the new continent America after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, whom he believed had discovered the continent before Christopher Columbus in 1492. A larger copy of the map can be viewed at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, which was a gift from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the United States in 2007 to mark the 500th anniversary of the naming of America.

German researchers are set to make the map, which is printed in clear black ink on yellowing paper, available to view online beginning July 4, American Independence Day.