How have I never heard of this?!
Okay, back up, back up. We went to a potluck with friends tonight and the hosts had visited Italy during April, and after we were done eating Sue showed us what they’d seen. Florence. Rome.
The Pope speaking.
Randomly running into a fellow Mormon in the crowd whose parents they knew in Germany!
There was a notice that due to the Exploding Cart, the buses would not be running on this date.
Yeah, she hadn’t known what that was either. She showed us a bit of it in video.
Wikipedia gives the history, and, um, the Crusades and stealing flints from a church did not help make those soldiers more righteous and nine hundred years of celebration with the spoils of war (they use them to start all this.) But whatever.
Five hundred years ago some rich guy discovered fireworks. So they upgraded.
A mechanical dove shoots across the inside of the cathedral along a cable (about 4:20), lights The Cart, which looks a bit like someone saw a drawing of a Japanese tea house and decided that a metal version of that was just the thing, and shoots back into the cathedral while fireworks start to go off out there. The crowd is crazy-close but doesn’t try to come closer. There’s video here from last month that I haven’t found my friends’ faces in yet but they were there.
My favorite (10:21) is the deelie-bopper thingy on the top of this strange contraption twirling in glee.
Then shooting out miniature roll-down flags for the grand finale. Who knew.