Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents, and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and was patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more robust alternative to the traditional black powder explosives. It allows the use of nitroglycerine's favorable explosive properties while greatly reducing its risk of accidental detonation.
An explosive is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances.
Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound with the formula NH4NO3. It is a white crystalline salt consisting of ions of ammonium and nitrate. It is highly soluble in water and hygroscopic as a solid, although it does not form hydrates. It is predominantly used in agriculture as a high-nitrogen fertilizer.
ANFO ( AN-foh) (or AN/FO, for ammonium nitrate/fuel oil) is a widely used bulk industrial high explosive. It consists of 94% porous prilled ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) (AN), which acts as the oxidizing agent and absorbent for the fuel, and 6% number 2 fuel oil (FO). The use of ANFO originated in the 1950s.
Deng Nan is a Chinese politician and physicist.
The 1947 Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on April 16, 1947, in the port of Texas City, Texas, United States, located in Galveston Bay. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history and one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions.
The Ryongchŏn disaster was a train disaster that occurred on 22 April 2004 in the town of Ryongchŏn, North Korea, near the border with the People's Republic of China. At least 54 people were killed, including some Syrian scientists.
There have been many extremely large explosions, accidental and intentional, caused by modern high explosives, boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions (BLEVEs), older explosives such as gunpowder, volatile petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline, and other chemical reactions. This list contains the largest known examples, sorted by date. An unambiguous ranking in order of severity is not possible; a 1994 study by historian Jay White of 130 large explosions suggested that they need to be ranked by an overall effect of power, quantity, radius, loss of life and property destruction, but concluded that such rankings are difficult to assess.
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The ton of TNT is a unit of energy defined by convention to be 4.184 gigajoules, which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a metric ton of TNT. In other words, for each gram of TNT exploded, 4.184 kilojoules of energy are released.
The 2008 Kunming bus bombings occurred on 21 July 2008 when explosions aboard two public buses in downtown Kunming, the capital of southwest China's Yunnan province, killed two people. The explosions were deliberate, according to police. The attacks occurred amid heightened tensions due to the Beijing Olympics. Although the Turkestan Islamic Party claimed responsibility for the incident, China later said the explosions were "not an act of terrorism".
The Shijiazhuang bombings, also known as Jin Ruchao bombings and March 16 bombings, were a series of bomb blasts that took place on March 16, 2001, in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province in North China. A total of 108 people were killed, and 38 others injured when within a short period of time several bombs exploded near four apartment buildings. Investigations found that Jin was motivated by hatred for his ex-wife, ex-mother-in-law and a lover; he had previously threatened to blow up their buildings.
The 2011 Fuzhou bombings were three separate, synchronized explosions at government buildings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, China on the morning of 26 May 2011. At least three people died, and at least seven were injured. The perpetrator, 52-year-old Qian Mingqi, was among those killed in the blasts, leading China's state-run news agencies to label it a suicide bombing.
Qingshuihe explosion (清水河大爆炸) is a chemical explosion occurred in Qingshuihe Subdistrict, Luohu District, Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China on August 5, 1993. It's the second largest chemical explosion accident since the end of World War II.
On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions at the Port of Tianjin in Tianjin, Northern China, killed 173 people, according to official reports, and injured hundreds of others. The explosions occurred at a container storage station in the Binhai New Area of Tianjin, China. The first two explosions occurred 33 seconds apart. The second explosion was much larger and involved the detonation of about 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. Fires caused by the initial explosions continued to burn uncontrolled throughout the weekend, resulting in eight additional explosions on 15 August.
Ma Mingfang, né Ruzhou (汝舟), art name Jimin (济民), was a People's Republic of China politician and early leader of CCP in Shaanxi. Born in Yejiacha (叶家岔) village, Mizhi county, Shaanxi, Ma joined the Party in 1925 when he studied in No.4 normal school of Shaanxi. He was the first Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of his home province of Shaanxi and governor of Shaanxi. He was an alternate member of the 7th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and a full member of the 8th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He died in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution.
On 4 August 2020, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut in the capital city of Lebanon exploded, causing at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, and US$15 billion in property damage, as well as leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless. A cargo of 2,750 tonnes of the substance had been stored in a warehouse without proper safety measures for the previous six years after having been confiscated by Lebanese authorities from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus. The explosion was preceded by a fire in the same warehouse.
The 1972 Taroom explosion occurred after a truck carrying ammonium nitrate, an explosive and fertilizer, caught fire on 30 August 1972 near Taroom, Central Queensland, Australia. The explosion, on the Fitzroy Developmental Road near Stonecroft Station, 90 kilometres north-west of Taroom, killed three men.
The Fanglin Village primary school explosion occurred on 6 March 2001, in Jiangxi, China. Li Chuicai, a 32-year-old villager, was alleged to have ignited explosives in a classroom, killing 42 people.
