147 Fun Facts About Fire

Chemically speaking, fire is the rapid what of a fuel?

Oxidation gives off heat faster than it can escape, so each burning layer of fuel lights the next and a fire feeds itself; rusting is the same kind of reaction, run far too slowly to flare.

What are the three elements of the fire triangle?

Heat, fuel and oxygen are the triangle's three sides: take any one away and the fire goes out, which is why smothering a fire to cut off its air puts it out.

What shape does a flame take in the microgravity of space?

Spherical flames form in microgravity because nothing makes hot gas rise: with no buoyant convection to draw the flame up into a teardrop, it spreads evenly in every direction.

When a hydrocarbon flame gets enough air, what colour does it turn?

With enough air the flame turns blue, as on a Bunsen burner with its air hole open: complete combustion leaves no glowing soot, which is what makes a candle flame yellow.

Which chemist showed that burning is combination with a gas in the air, and named that gas oxygen?

Antoine Lavoisier showed that burning is combination with oxygen, a name he coined, and so ended the old belief that burning things give off a substance of their own.

Which Hindu god of fire receives the offerings poured into the Vedic sacrificial flame?

Agni is the Vedic god of fire and the messenger who carries offerings to the other gods; the Rigveda's very first hymn is addressed to him.

At a 400,000-year-old site in England, early humans seem to have made fire by striking flint against which mineral?

Pyrite is so rare around the Barnham site that its two fragments were probably carried there on purpose; they lay beside burnt soil and fire-cracked handaxes.

In Greek myth, how did Zeus punish Prometheus for giving fire to humans?

An eagle ate his liver daily, and each night it grew back; in Hesiod's telling Zeus punished mankind as well, sending Pandora with her jar of evils.

Which Roman goddess's sacred flame was tended by six virgin priestesses?

Vesta's flame was thought to keep Rome safe, so it was never allowed to die; a Vestal who let it go out was punished with a beating.

Which religion holds fire so sacred that its places of worship are known as fire temples?

Zoroastrianism keeps a consecrated fire burning in each temple; the flame at Yazd in Iran is said to have burned since about AD 470, carried from shrine to shrine over the centuries.

The Great Fire of London began in 1666 on which street?

Pudding Lane held Thomas Farriner's bakery, where the fire began after midnight on 2 September; a strong east wind then drove the flames across the city for days.

How many deaths from the Great Fire of London are traditionally recorded?

Six is the traditional count, though some historians suspect many poor victims left no record; the fire still destroyed some 13,000 houses and more than 80 parish churches.

After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a gift of 8,000 books from Britain founded which institution?

The Chicago Public Library grew from the 'English Book Donation', sent in sympathy after a fire that killed about 300 people; it opened on New Year's Day 1873.

What stands today on the spot where the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 began?

The city's fire academy opened in 1961 on the spot where the blaze began. In 1871 a bungled alarm cost the first crews vital minutes, and a force of about 200 firefighters with 17 horse-drawn engines never caught up.

The Peshtigo Fire, America's deadliest wildfire, was centred on which state on the same day as the Chicago fire?

Wisconsin's Peshtigo fire killed more than a thousand people, several times Chicago's toll, yet it stayed in the shadow of the city that burned the same night.

The 1657 Great Fire of Meireki destroyed most of which Japanese city?

Edo, now Tokyo, lost perhaps 100,000 people to the fire and the blizzard that followed; legend blames a priest who was burning a cursed kimono when the wind caught the flames.

A gigantic fire whirl killed tens of thousands of refugees in Tokyo after which 1923 disaster?

The Great Kantō earthquake struck near noon on 1 September 1923; the fires it started merged into a whirl that swept the open depot grounds where tens of thousands had fled for safety.

A coal-seam fire has burned beneath which anthracite-country town since at least May 1962?

Centralia was emptied by its fire: most residents were relocated in the 1980s, the state condemned the town in 1992, and the 2020 census found five people left.

What starts the great majority of wildland fires in the United States?

Human activity started nearly 85 percent of them in federal data for 2000 to 2017, through unattended campfires, burning debris, equipment sparks and dropped cigarettes.

Black Saturday, Australia's deadliest bushfire disaster, struck which state in February 2009?

Victoria lost 173 people and more than 2,000 houses on 7 February 2009; the royal commission that followed reshaped how the state prepares for and fights bushfires.

Which English chemist invented the first commercially successful friction match around 1826?

John Walker refused to patent his 'friction lights', saying the public should have them, so London makers copied them freely and he gave up making matches by 1830.

The key innovation of the safety match was putting which substance on a separate striking surface?

Red phosphorus sits on the box, not the head, so a safety match lights only when the two meet; the head no longer needed the poisonous white form.

Zippo lighters have been made since 1933 in Bradford, an old oil-boom town in which state?

Pennsylvania's Bradford has made Zippos since George Blaisdell produced the first one in early 1933; he is said to have picked the name because he liked the sound of 'zipper'.

At which German university, newly fitted with coal-gas lines, was the Bunsen burner designed in the 1850s?

Heidelberg gave Bunsen a new gas-fed laboratory, and he wanted a hot flame with no soot or glow; with it he and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered two elements, caesium and rubidium.

Which glow, seen on ships' masts in thunderstorms, is really electrical plasma and no fire at all?

St. Elmo's fire is an electrical discharge: a storm's electric field makes the air around pointed things such as masts and church spires glow, often with a hiss or crackle.

Frederick Graff, credited with inventing the pillar fire hydrant around 1801, went on to run which city's water works?

Philadelphia's Frederick Graff is believed to have patented his hydrant, but nobody can check: the early patent records burned in the Patent Office fire of 1836.

Which famously rich Roman bought burning buildings, and the houses next door, from their frightened owners at knock-down prices?

Crassus kept some 500 slave builders ready, Plutarch says, and bought houses that were on fire along with their neighbours for a trifle, until much of Rome was his.

An early automatic electric fire alarm was patented in 1890 by Francis Upton, an associate of which inventor?

Thomas Edison's mathematician Francis Upton patented the 'Portable Electric Fire Alarm' with Fernando Dibble; its battery-powered bell rang when a room grew too hot.

Ionisation smoke detectors typically use which radioactive isotope?

Americium-241 gives off alpha particles that ionise the air between two charged plates so a small current flows; smoke drifting in breaks the flow and trips the alarm.

The Olympic torch relay was introduced at which Games?

Berlin 1936 staged the first torch relay, carried from Olympia a kilometre at a time; the Nazi regime used the Games' imagery to link its Germany with ancient Greece.

The modern Olympic flame is lit in Olympia before the ruins of a sanctuary to which goddess?

Hera's temple at Olympia is where women playing ancient priestesses light the flame, using a curved mirror to concentrate the sun's rays on the torch.

Guy Fawkes Night bonfires on 5 November commemorate the foiling of which 1605 conspiracy?

The Gunpowder Plot aimed to blow up James I at the opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605; Guy Fawkes was caught with the barrels beneath the House of Lords and Londoners lit bonfires to celebrate.

Burning Man's wooden effigy is torched in which Nevada location?

The Black Rock Desert has hosted the burn since 1990, four years after Larry Harvey and Jerry James set fire to the first wooden Man on a California beach.

Which Byzantine naval weapon could burn on water and had a recipe so secret it has been lost?

Greek fire, first used by the Byzantine navy in the 670s against Arab fleets, was sprayed through siphons and kept burning on the sea; its formula was a state secret and is now lost.

Napalm was developed in 1942 by a team under Louis Fieser at which university?

Harvard's chemists named napalm for its recipe: naphthenate and palmitate salts, stirred into petrol to turn it into a firm jelly.

Firewalkers usually escape burns thanks to which property of glowing wood coals?

Poor heat conduction means the coals pass little warmth to a foot in the brief moment each step lasts, so the feat is physics and needs no special faith or state of mind.

Besides cheap animal tallow, ancient Romans dipped their candles from which costlier material?

Beeswax burned cleanly, without tallow's smoke and smell, but it cost so much that only wealthy Romans used it; most homes were lit by oil lamps.

What is the crime of deliberately setting fire to someone's property called?

Arson in English common law meant the malicious burning of someone else's dwelling, so a man who set fire to his own house had committed no arson at all.

Flames from hydrocarbon fuels consist mainly of what?

A hydrocarbon flame is mostly carbon dioxide, water vapour, oxygen and nitrogen: the products of burning plus the unreacted part of the air, with glowing soot particles supplying the yellow light.

Fire is one of the four classical elements alongside which three?

Earth, water and air joined fire as the four 'roots' of everything in the teaching of Empedocles, who had Love mixing them together and Strife pulling them apart.

In Exodus, from what did God first speak to Moses on Mount Horeb?

God spoke to Moses from a burning bush that was not consumed by the flames, in Exodus chapter 3; the pillar of fire came later, guiding the Israelites by night.

Which fire-suppressant chemical, phased out under the Montreal Protocol, works by interrupting the combustion chain reaction?

Halon interrupts the chain reaction of burning and leaves no residue, which made it the choice for computer rooms and aircraft until its damage to the ozone layer ended production.

When fire strips protective vegetation, what does heavy rainfall then cause?

With the vegetation and litter gone, heavy rain causes soil erosion and debris flows on burned slopes, which is why hillside communities fear the first winter storms after a fire.

What are the hot, glowing remains of a fire called once the flames have died?

Embers are the glowing, flameless remains of burned wood or coal; they can stay hot enough to reignite a fire for hours, which is why campfires are doused rather than left to die.

What must solid materials like wood do first before they burn?

Wood must break down by pyrolysis into gases before it burns: those gases are what flame up, and their heat drives more pyrolysis in the solid beneath.

What toxic gas is produced when there is not enough oxygen for complete combustion?

Carbon monoxide gas, colourless and odourless, clings to haemoglobin over 200 times more tightly than oxygen does, so even a little of it starves the body of oxygen.

Until the late 1700s, chemists explained burning as the escape of which imaginary substance?

Phlogiston was supposed to escape from anything that burned; the idea fell when burning proved to be combination with oxygen from the air.

What is a firefighter who parachutes into remote wildfires called?

A smokejumper reaches a remote fire while it is still small; tools, food and water follow by parachute, enough to keep the crew working alone for 48 hours.

Which metal burns with a brilliant white light and was used in early photographic flash powder?

Magnesium burns so fiercely that water only feeds the fire: the metal strips the oxygen from water and frees hydrogen, so crews smother it with dry sand.

When heat bursts the glass bulb in one sprinkler head, which sprinklers spray water?

Only that one sprays: each head opens by itself when its own bulb gets hot enough, so a small fire is drenched at once while the rest of the building stays dry.

What is a low-intensity wildfire burning leaf litter and grass on the forest floor called?

A surface or crawling fire stays low and fairly cool, which lets crews fight it directly; a crown fire racing through the treetops is often beyond anyone's control.

What is a deliberately set, controlled fire used in forest management called?

A prescribed burn clears built-up fuel so that later wildfires burn less fiercely, a practice Indigenous peoples relied on for millennia before foresters revived it.

The 'Big Burn' of 1910 hardened which US agency's policy of fighting every wildfire?

The US Forest Service, only five years old, doubled down after the Big Burn's three million acres: it fought every fire for decades, until ecologists showed that forests need to burn.

What is the primary cause of death for people caught in indoor fires?

Smoke inhalation kills more fire victims than burns do: toxic gases can overcome people well before any flame reaches them, which is why a working smoke alarm matters so much.

What is smoke, physically?

An aerosol of particulates in gases, smoke is largely fuel that failed to burn, which is why a hot fire with plenty of air makes far less of it.

Which Greek god of fire and the forge made armour for Achilles?

Hephaestus forged the new armour at the plea of Achilles' mother Thetis, after Hector had stripped the first set from the body of Patroclus.

What process draws melted wax up to a candle's flame?

Capillary action draws the melted wax up the wick's fibres to the flame, where it vaporises and burns; that is why a candle needs its wick and not just a pool of wax.

Which Hans Christian Andersen tale ends with a freezing child's vision of her grandmother on New Year's Eve?

The Little Match Girl strikes her unsold matches one by one for warmth, and each flame shows her a vision: a stove, a roast goose, a Christmas tree and finally her grandmother.

Before friction matches existed, what did the English word 'match' mean?

A wick is what 'match' first meant, from an Old French word; the name passed to the slow-burning cord that fired cannon, and only then to the friction match.

Which Swedish financier, nicknamed the Match King, came to control most of the world's match production in the 1920s?

Ivar Kreuger lent money to cash-strapped governments in return for match monopolies; after he was found shot dead in Paris in 1932, his profits proved largely fictitious.

The 1888 London matchgirls' strike was against conditions at which company's factory?

Bryant & May's women and girls walked out in July 1888 after Annie Besant exposed their fines, low pay and phosphorus poisoning; within weeks the firm gave way.

Million-year-old ash in South Africa's Wonderwerk Cave is widely accepted evidence of fire use by which early human?

Homo erectus is the likeliest fire-user: the ash and burned bone lay deep inside the cave, beyond the reach of any wildfire, so the fire must have been carried or lit there.

What food, cooked some 780,000 years ago beside the Jordan River, is the earliest evidence of cooking yet found?

Fish it was: a 2022 study found that the teeth of large carp-like fish lying by ancient hearths had been heated gently, as in cooking, not scorched.

What term describes substances that ignite spontaneously at ambient temperature?

Pyrophoric metal is what makes a lighter spark: scraping its 'flint', an alloy of cerium and iron, throws off hot shavings that catch fire the moment they meet the air.

What is the lowest temperature at which a substance catches fire with no spark or flame called?

Autoignition point is the heat a diesel engine exploits: squeezing air makes it hot enough to light the fuel by itself, so the engine needs no spark plugs.

Which Hindu spring festival opens with a bonfire the night before coloured powders are thrown?

Holi begins with Holika Dahan, a bonfire on the eve of the festival recalling the burning of the demoness Holika; the next day people throw coloured powders and water.

In Norse myth, which fire giant leads the assault that burns the world at Ragnarök?

Surtr, guardian of fiery Muspelheim, leads its hosts against the gods at Ragnarök, kills Freyr and sets the world ablaze with his flaming sword.

What do firefighters call the explosive burst of flame when fresh air rushes into a hot, oxygen-starved room?

A backdraft follows when a starved fire fills a room with hot, unburned gases: open a door and the inrush of oxygen ignites them in a single blast.

What happens to a burning room at the moment of flashover?

Everything exposed ignites at once because heat radiating from the fire's hot gases brings the whole room to ignition point together; it is the most dangerous moment of a fire.

Why do firefighters cut holes in the roofs of burning buildings?

To release heat and smoke: both rise and pool under the roof, so a hole lets them out, which cools the building and clears the view for crews who must get close to the flames.

In the full 'stop, drop and roll' drill, what are you told to cover with your hands as you roll?

Your face is covered to shield it from the flames while rolling smothers them; the one thing never to do is run, which only fans the fire.

Long before fireworks, what did people in ancient China throw on fires to make a loud bang?

Bamboo stalks burst with a bang as the air sealed in their hollow sections heats up, and the Chinese word for firecracker still means 'exploding bamboo'.

Compounds of which element give fireworks their green colour?

Barium compounds burn green; blue is the colour firework makers find hardest, because the copper compounds that give it break down if the flame gets too hot.

What defines a firestorm?

A fire that creates and sustains its own wind system pulls air inward from every side toward its centre, and that inrush feeds the flames: this is a firestorm.

Operation Gomorrah's raids of July 1943 raised a firestorm that devastated which German port city?

Hamburg burned so fiercely partly because the summer had been unusually hot and dry; the raids killed tens of thousands of people in little more than a week.

What gear protects firefighters' lungs inside a burning building?

A self-contained breathing apparatus carries its own air on the wearer's back, because a filter mask can strain fumes out of the air but cannot supply the oxygen a fire has burned out of a room.

In the US system, ordinary solids like wood and paper make which kind of fire?

Class A fires burn ordinary solids such as wood, paper and cloth, and plain water puts them out; thrown on burning oil, the same water scatters the fuel and spreads the flames.

Wet-chemical extinguishers put out deep-fryer fires by turning the burning oil into what?

A soapy foam: the potassium salts in the spray react with the hot fat, the same chemistry that makes soap, and the crust seals off the air while the water cools the oil below its ignition point.

Which category covers fires of burning combustible metals?

Combustible metals such as titanium, sodium and lithium are Class D fires; water can make them worse, so they are smothered with dry powders such as sodium chloride or graphite.

Which English word comes from the Latin for 'hearth'?

Focus is the Latin word for a hearth or fireplace; Kepler adopted it in 1604 for the point where rays converge, and the everyday sense of 'centre of attention' followed.

Which fire-resistant mineral was widely used in insulation and brake linings before its cancer link?

Asbestos takes its name from the Greek for 'inextinguishable'; the lung diseases its fibres cause, including mesothelioma, can take decades to appear, so people kept falling ill long after their exposure ended.

Who buried wine and a Parmesan cheese in his garden during the Great Fire of London?

Samuel Pepys wrote on 4 September 1666 that he had buried his wine and Parmesan in a garden pit; the precaution proved needless, because the fire stopped short and his house and diary survived.

Whose hesitation delayed the firebreaks that might have checked the Great Fire of London?

Lord Mayor Thomas Bloodworth, roused in the night, refused to order houses pulled down and reportedly said a woman could piss the fire out; by the time demolitions began the fire was out of control.

Which great church was destroyed by the Great Fire of London?

St Paul's Cathedral was thought a safe refuge, so booksellers packed its crypt with their stock; but wooden scaffolding put up for repairs caught fire and helped destroy the roof and everything stored below.

Which 202-foot column in the City of London commemorates the Great Fire of 1666?

The Monument stands 202 feet tall because that is its distance from the baker's shop where the fire began; in 1681 an inscription blaming Catholics for the blaze was added to its base.

Which Chicago landmark famously survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871?

The Water Tower's limestone walls stood, but the pumping station beside it lost its roof to the flames and the pumps stopped, leaving the city's water mains dry and its firefighters helpless.

In legend, which animal kicked over a lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire?

A cow belonging to Mrs. O'Leary takes the blame, and the fire did start in or near her barn; but a reporter later claimed to have made the tale up, and in 1997 Chicago's city council cleared both her and the cow.

A carbon dioxide extinguisher is best used on which kind of fire?

Electrical equipment: carbon dioxide does not conduct electricity and leaves no residue, so it smothers the fire without shorting or ruining the machine, though the fire can re-ignite once the gas drifts away.

In a stored-pressure fire extinguisher, where is the expellant gas kept?

In the same chamber as the agent, already under pressure, so the unit is ready to fire; cartridge types keep the gas apart, and the user must first puncture the cartridge to pressurise the unit.

What does the acronym PASS tell someone to do with a fire extinguisher?

Pull, aim, squeeze, sweep: pull the pin, aim low at the base of the fire, squeeze the handle and sweep from side to side until the fire appears to be out.

One common smoke detector trips when smoke scatters what inside it?

Light scattered by smoke onto a sensor trips a photoelectric alarm; because this type and the ionisation type detect different kinds of fire, the US Fire Administration advises fitting both.

Which fire-starting tool spins its spindle with a cord sawn back and forth?

A bow drill loops its cord around the spindle, so each stroke of the bow spins it against a fireboard in longer, easier turns than bare palms can manage, until friction heats the wood enough to light tinder.

Which 1974 disaster film cast Steve McQueen as a fire chief and Paul Newman as an architect?

The Towering Inferno fused two rival novels, The Tower and The Glass Inferno: Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox each held one, and rather than race each other they made a single film together.

In Greek myth, which hero finally freed Prometheus from his chains?

Heracles freed Prometheus in the Caucasus with Zeus's consent; in Apollodorus's telling, the Titan then advised him not to fetch the golden apples of the Hesperides himself but to send Atlas.

Who lit the Olympic cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Games?

Muhammad Ali, his arm trembling with Parkinson's, took the flame from swimmer Janet Evans; later in the Games he was handed a replacement for the gold medal he had won as a boxer in 1960.

Beijing's 2008 Olympic torch relay carried a flame to the summit of which mountain?

Mount Everest was climbed by a second flame split off from the relay: it reached the summit on 8 May 2008 while the main relay carried on elsewhere in China.

What lit the Olympic cauldron at the 1992 Barcelona Games?

A flaming arrow: Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo aimed over the cauldron rather than into it, so that gas rising from the bowl would catch as the flame passed.

Kurt Vonnegut survived the February 1945 firebombing of which German city as a prisoner of war?

Vonnegut, a captured US infantryman, survived the 13–15 February 1945 bombing of Dresden in an underground meat locker, the experience behind Slaughterhouse-Five.

Who founded the Union Fire Company, Philadelphia's first volunteer fire brigade, in 1736?

Benjamin Franklin pressed the idea in an anonymous letter to his own newspaper, the one in which he wrote that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure': advice about carrying hot coals.

Which 1979 war film gave us the line 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning'?

Apocalypse Now gives the line to Robert Duvall's Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, a surfing fanatic who throws his helicopters at a Vietnamese beach once he learns a famous surfer is on the boat he is escorting.

What colour is the retardant slurry that aircraft drop on wildfires?

Red dye is added so aircrews can see where each drop has landed, while the ammonium phosphate salts in the slurry go on slowing the fire.

In which Canadian province did the 2016 wildfire that emptied Fort McMurray burn?

Alberta's Fort McMurray was emptied of about 88,000 people as the fire swept in; it also shut the oil sands plants to the north, halting about a quarter of Canada's oil output.

New Yorkers cooling off in a heatwave open a 'Johnny pump', which is what?

A fire hydrant: city firehouses hand out spray caps so that one can be opened legally in the heat, giving the street its shower while wasting far less water.

Fire engines rushed in from Washington in 1904 found their hoses would not fit in which burning city?

Baltimore's Great Fire levelled more than 1,500 buildings while crews from other cities found their couplings would not fit; some 600 varieties were then in use across America, and the fire spurred the push for one standard.

What caused California's deadly 2018 Camp Fire?

A faulty power line: a hook on a PG&E transmission tower gave way on 8 November 2018, and in 2020 the utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.

California's 2018 Camp Fire took its name from what?

A road: Camp Creek Road, near where the fire began in Butte County, gave the fire its name, because wildfires are often named for the place they start.

Which Northern California town was mostly destroyed by the 2018 Camp Fire?

Paradise lost most of its homes on 8 November 2018; a town of about 26,000 people before the fire, it counted fewer than 5,000 at the 2020 census.

Which landmark stands where the lake of Nero's post-fire palace, the Golden House, once lay?

The Colosseum stands on the filled-in lake of the Domus Aurea: after Nero's fall, Vespasian built an arena for the public there, handing back land Nero had taken for himself after the Great Fire.

Near which Roman landmark did the Great Fire of Rome start?

The Circus Maximus, Rome's chariot-racing stadium, had shops packed with flammable goods at one end; Tacitus says the fire began among them and the wind swept it the full length of the Circus.

Whom did Nero blame for the Great Fire of Rome, per Tacitus?

Tacitus wrote that Nero pinned the blame on the Christian community, who were tortured and executed, some burned alive as torches; it counts as the first imperial persecution of Christians.

As the saying goes, what did Nero do while Rome burned?

Fiddled, in the saying, though the violin lay some 1,500 years in the future; Tacitus says Nero was away at Antium when the fire began, and reports only a rumour that he sang of the fall of Troy.

The Triangle factory, scene of a deadly 1911 fire, made 'shirtwaists', which were what?

Blouses, cut like a man's shirt; most of the 146 dead were young women who sewed them, and the outcry led New York State to pass dozens of new labour and fire-safety laws.

Why could many Triangle Shirtwaist workers not escape the fire?

The stairwell doors were locked, a common practice then to stop theft and unauthorised breaks; the building's single fire escape buckled under the workers who crowded onto it.

Which future New Dealer witnessed the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire from the street?

Frances Perkins was having tea in nearby Washington Square when she heard the fire engines and ran to the scene; later FDR's labor secretary, she called it the day the New Deal was born.

Who coined the name 'Molotov cocktail' in 1939?

The Finns coined 'Molotov cocktail' in the Winter War of 1939–40, mocking Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov as they hurled the weapon at his army's tanks.

The 'Molotov cocktail' was a joke answer to Molotov's claim that his country's bombers were dropping what?

Food aid: Molotov said on the radio that the bombers were making humanitarian food deliveries, so their cluster bombs were nicknamed 'Molotov bread baskets' and the cocktail was the drink to go with them.

What is a Molotov cocktail, physically?

A glass bottle of fuel with a cloth wick is lit and thrown to shatter and spread the flames; the weapon is older than its name, having been thrown at tanks in the Spanish Civil War from 1936.

Who wrote the 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451?

Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library on a typewriter rented at ten cents per half hour; the whole draft cost him $9.80.

According to the title page of Fahrenheit 451, what happens at that temperature?

Book paper burns at that heat, says the title page; the author had asked and been told the figure, and his novel's firemen start fires instead of putting them out.

In Fahrenheit 451, which robot creature hunts down people who hide books?

The Mechanical Hound, an eight-legged robot, stings its prey with a drugged needle; after Montag destroys one with a flamethrower, a second is sent after him with news helicopters filming the chase.

Which hot, dry winds blowing from the desert fan autumn wildfires around Los Angeles?

The Santa Ana winds blow downslope from the Great Basin toward the Southern California coast, warming and drying as they descend; they drove the January 2025 Los Angeles fires.

Which Sierra Nevada tree's cones can stay shut until fire dries them?

Giant sequoia cones can stay green and shut for up to 20 years, then dry out in a fire's heat and shed their seed onto the bare ground the flames have just cleared, where seedlings root best.

Australia's 'firehawks' are birds of prey reported to spread bushfires by doing what?

Dropping burning sticks: black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons are said to carry lit twigs to unburnt grass to flush out prey, on the word of Aboriginal people and firefighters who have watched them.

Which Australian marsupial was listed as endangered across much of the east in 2022, after the 2019–20 bushfires?

Koalas, slow to flee a fire front, died in their thousands in 2019–20; in February 2022 the species was listed as endangered in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

What nickname was given to Australia's 2019–20 bushfire season?

Black Summer's fires burned more than 24 million hectares and directly killed 33 people; the smoke that hung over eastern Australia for months is blamed for a further 417 deaths.

Which Australian forests are famous for resprouting from their trunks after bushfire?

Eucalyptus forests are built for fire: the trees resprout from buds deep under their thick bark and from woody swellings at their base, while their oil-rich leaves make them highly flammable.

Early fire hoses, made in Amsterdam in the 1670s, were sewn from which material?

Leather, sewn in 15-metre lengths in Jan van der Heyden's workshop; before hoses, fire engines had a very short reach, with nothing to carry their water to the flames.

Why is a fire hose hung up to dry after use?

Standing water inside can degrade it, leaving the hose unreliable when it is next needed, which is why many fire stations were built with a tall tower just for hanging hoses to dry.

Which Founding Father wrote to his wife Abigail in 1776 that independence should be marked with 'Bonfires and Illuminations'?

John Adams expected the party on 2 July, the day Congress voted for independence, not the 4th; fireworks marked the first anniversary on 4 July 1777 all the same.

Fires following a 1906 earthquake destroyed much of which US city?

San Francisco's fires, started when the 1906 earthquake ruptured gas mains, did most of the damage; some began when firefighters untrained in dynamite blew up buildings as firebreaks and set them alight instead.

Which plant nutrient is mostly lost to the air when vegetation burns?

Nitrogen escapes into the atmosphere when plants burn, while potassium and phosphorus stay in the ash and return to the soil; the loss is made good over time by lightning and by nitrogen-fixing plants such as clover.

Which small flame in a gas boiler stays lit to ignite the main burner?

A pilot light is a small gas flame kept burning permanently to light the main burner on demand; a thermocouple sitting in it shuts off the gas if the flame goes out.

What flameless burning can start residential fires on upholstered furniture?

Smouldering is slow, flameless burning on the surface of a solid; a cigarette dropped on a sofa can burn that way silently for hours before flames suddenly erupt.

What is burning driven by internal self-heating and thermal runaway called?

Spontaneous combustion happens when a material heats itself faster than it can shed heat, as oil-soaked rags or damp haystacks do, until it reaches ignition with no external flame.

What does burning hydrogen with oxygen, the reaction behind many rocket engines, produce?

Water vapour is the only product, which is how hydrogen got its name: it was coined from the Greek for 'water-former' after Henry Cavendish found that burning the gas produced water.

Which corps did the emperor Augustus create in AD 6 to fight Rome's fires?

The Vigiles, paid for by a tax on slave sales, patrolled Rome in seven divisions and doubled as its night watch.

Cincinnati's 1853 fire department, America's first fully paid one, adopted which new machine?

Steam pumper: the first practical steam fire engine was tested in Cincinnati in 1853, and its co-inventor Miles Greenwood, whose own ironworks had burned the year before, became the new department's first chief.

Which Christian festival on 2 February marks the presentation of Jesus at the Temple?

Candlemas takes its name from the candles blessed in church that day; its old weather lore, that a bright Candlemas means more winter to come, crossed to America with German settlers as Groundhog Day.

Why did US chemists rush to develop napalm in WWII?

Early incendiary gels thickened petrol with natural rubber, but Japan had seized the natural rubber plantations of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies in 1942, so Fieser's team devised napalm's aluminium-soap thickener instead.

Which dog breed ran alongside horse-drawn fire engines and became the firehouse mascot?

Dalmatians bond unusually well with horses, so they were trained to run ahead of the horse-drawn engines, clearing a path to the fire, and to guard the stables at night.

Which part of Notre-Dame collapsed during the 2019 fire?

The spire that fell, known in French as the flèche, was a 19th-century addition by Viollet-le-Duc; the sixteen statues around its base survived only because they had been lifted off for restoration days before.

What made the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire race up the outside of the building?

Flammable cladding, aluminium sheets around a polyethylene core, carried a fire that began in a fourth-floor fridge-freezer to the top of the tower in about half an hour; 72 people died.

After Boston's 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire, laws required a hinged exit beside which kind of door?

Revolving doors: the club's main entrance was a single one, which jammed as bodies piled up on both sides in a fire that killed 492, so new laws required each to be flanked by an outward-swinging door or made to fold flat.

Chicago's Iroquois Theatre, where about 600 people died in 1903, had opened weeks earlier billed as what?

Absolutely fireproof, said the playbills; but an arc lamp set a muslin curtain alight during a matinee of Mr. Blue Beard, and door latches that fleeing patrons could not work helped trap them.

What finally stopped the 1988 fires that burned a third of Yellowstone National Park?

Rain and snow did what thousands of firefighters could not: the snow that fell on 11 September stopped the fires' advance.

Retreating Iraqi troops set fire to more than 600 oil wells in which country in 1991?

Kuwait's wells burned for months: land mines laid around them had to be cleared before crews could get close, and the last fire was not capped until November 1991.

Where did the real Smokey Bear, rescued from a 1950 wildfire, spend his life?

The National Zoo in Washington was his home for 26 years; he drew so many letters that the Postal Service gave him his own ZIP code, and after his death in 1976 he was buried back in Capitan, New Mexico.