46 Fun Facts About Dynamite

About 90% of which American monument was carved with dynamite rather than chisels?

Mount Rushmore's 'powdermen' cut their charges so exactly that they blasted to within a few inches of the finished faces. In 14 years of work on the cliff, not one worker was killed.

In which city was Alfred Nobel born in 1833?

Stockholm was no easy start: his father's business failed the very year Alfred was born, and his mother ran a small grocery shop to feed the family. The man who left a fortune grew up poor.

In which country was dynamite invented, at Geesthacht?

Germany, not his native Sweden: Nobel moved there in 1865 and built his works at Krümmel, outside Hamburg. It became the world's first dynamite factory and went on making explosives through two world wars.

What did Ascanio Sobrero make of his own discovery, nitroglycerin?

Too dangerous to use, he warned anyone who would listen. Decades later, thinking of all the people it had killed, he said he was almost ashamed to admit he had discovered it.

What did Nobel find that finally stabilised nitroglycerin into a portable explosive?

Diatomaceous earth, or kieselguhr, a crumbly sediment of fossil diatom shells, soaked up about three times its weight of nitroglycerin and turned it into a paste that could be shaped into sticks.

Where did Nobel carry on his dynamite experiments after an 1866 blast wrecked his new factory?

On a raft on a river, moored well away from the works, he tried one additive after another through the autumn of 1866. By the new year his rebuilt factory was turning out dynamite.

Which device did Nobel invent to detonate nitroglycerin safely from a distance?

The blasting cap, a small metal capsule of sensitive explosive lit by a fuse, set off the main charge by shock instead of flame. Introduced in 1865, it opened the modern age of high explosives.

Which member of Nobel's family died in the 1864 nitroglycerin explosion at Heleneborg?

His brother Emil, the youngest of the family, died with several workers when the shed blew up in September 1864. The city promptly banned nitroglycerin work inside its limits, yet Alfred pressed on.

Glycerin, the sweet syrup Nobel turned into nitroglycerin, was a by-product of making which household product?

Soap makers boil fats with lye, which splits them into soap and a sweet, harmless syrup. In Nobel's day glycerin was a leftover of the soap and candle trades, so his explosive began as a washday by-product.

Alfred's brothers Ludvig and Robert Nobel made a fortune at Baku, on the Caspian Sea, in which industry?

Oil from the wells at Baku made Ludvig and Robert immensely rich, and Alfred held shares in their company. So part of the fortune behind his prizes came not from explosives but from petroleum.

Which explosive, used to blast rock in mines since the 1600s, did dynamite rapidly replace?

Black powder merely burns very fast, while dynamite detonates, sending out a shock wave that shatters hard rock. It quickly took over in mines, quarries and tunnels.

Roughly how much energy does a standard 190-gram stick of dynamite contain?

1 megajoule is about the food energy in a chocolate bar. The difference is speed: your body takes hours to burn through the bar, while the stick lets all of it go in a fraction of a second.

What does the 'dope' in dynamite refer to?

The absorbent medium mixed with stabiliser is the 'dope'. Nobel's first filler did nothing in the blast, but makers later switched to wood pulp and sodium nitrate, so the dope itself burned and added strength.

More than 60 million pounds of dynamite went into digging which waterway, opened in 1914?

The Panama Canal's Culebra Cut ran through solid rock, so crews drilled it and packed the holes with dynamite. Blasts were timed for the noon meal or the end of the shift, when the labourers had cleared out of the way.

Why do blasting manuals say cases of stored dynamite should be turned over regularly?

Liquid explosive sinks and pools as old sticks 'sweat' their nitroglycerin, and a puddle of it is as touchy as the raw liquid ever was. Turning the cases keeps it spread through the sticks.

In Breaking Bad, Walter White hurls which touchy explosive, long used to fire dynamite?

Mercury fulminate explodes at a sharp knock or a little heat, which is why a pinch of it could fire a whole charge of far steadier dynamite. The one crystal Walt throws blows out a drug lord's windows.

Which country, whose deep gold mines devoured explosives, led the world in dynamite production for decades after the Second World War?

South Africa's gold mines on the Witwatersrand needed so much blasting that factories were built beside them. One, at Modderfontein near Johannesburg, was by 1939 the largest explosives works in the world.

America's first dynamite factory opened in 1868 on a site that is now a park in which city?

San Francisco's Giant Powder Company made Nobel's explosive under licence on what is now Glen Canyon Park. The factory did not last long: late in 1869 an explosion destroyed it completely.

Which two companies were formed when DuPont's explosives monopoly was broken up?

Hercules and Atlas were carved out of DuPont in 1912. By buying up its rivals it had come to make about two-thirds of America's explosives, so the courts made it hand plants to two new competitors.

In 1886 a dynamite bomb thrown at police during a labour rally in Haymarket Square shook which American city?

Chicago saw four anarchists hanged for the blast, although the bomber was never identified. In 1889 socialist parties chose 1 May as International Workers' Day in memory of the affair, and much of the world still marks it.

In the Road Runner cartoons, which company sells Wile E. Coyote the dynamite and gadgets that always backfire?

Acme is Greek for 'highest point', and that is the joke: the gadgets and explosives Wile E. Coyote orders from the firm fail or blow up in his face every single time.

Why did dynamite never catch on as a filling for artillery shells?

The shock of firing set it off, so a shell could burst inside the gun. The US Navy's answer was the 'dynamite gun', which lobbed charges with compressed air, and one ship shelled Santiago that way in 1898.

What helped make TNT the standard filling for artillery shells?

It melts and pours: TNT turns liquid at about 80 °C, far short of the heat needed to make it explode. Shell makers simply cast it into the casings and let it set.

Which Australian rock band named a 1975 album and its title song after the explosive TNT?

AC/DC put out T.N.T. in December 1975 for Australia and New Zealand only. The rest of the world first heard its songs the next year, when the pick of them went onto the international album High Voltage.

What did Russell Penniman's cheaper 1885 'Extra' dynamite substitute for nitroglycerin?

Ammonium nitrate, a salt better known as a fertiliser, took the place of part of the costly nitroglycerin. The result was a dynamite both cheaper and safer to handle.

What is odd about the US Army's 'military dynamite'?

No nitroglycerin goes into it at all: the sticks are three-quarters RDX, a military explosive, which makes them far safer to store and carry. The Army kept the name and the familiar stick shape.

Which jelly-like explosive, stronger than dynamite, did Nobel invent in 1875?

Gelignite began, the story goes, with a cut finger: Nobel dressed the wound with collodion, a liquid bandage made from guncotton, and wondered what it would do to nitroglycerin. The two set into a tough jelly that even stood up to water.

Away from explosives, Nobel tried to make an artificial version of which fabric?

Silk was one of many sidelines for a man who died holding 355 patents. He travelled so often between factories in more than 20 countries that he was once called 'Europe's richest vagabond'.

According to the famous story, a French newspaper's premature obituary called Nobel what?

The merchant of death is dead, the headline supposedly ran in 1888, when a French paper mistook his brother Ludvig's death for his. Historians have never found the article, and some call the whole tale a myth.

Nobel's will let Swedish institutions award four prizes, but which one went to a committee chosen by Norway's parliament?

Peace was the odd one out, and Nobel never explained the choice. Norway shared a king with Sweden at the time, and although that union ended in 1905 the prize is still presented in Oslo.

In which Italian resort did Nobel die in 1896?

Sanremo was a refuge: after Nobel sold his smokeless powder to Italy, the French press cried treason and he was barred from research in France. He left Paris in 1891 for a villa on the Riviera, where he died.

A team in Sweden named nobelium, but which country was credited with discovering it?

The Soviet Union's laboratory at Dubna was judged the true discoverer, after years of rival claims from Berkeley in California. Nobody could ever repeat the Swedish result, yet the name that team chose was never dropped.

Besides explosives, nitroglycerin has been used since 1878 to treat what?

Angina patients still take it to ease chest pain. Late in life Nobel's own doctors prescribed it for his heart, under the name Trinitrin so as not to alarm anyone, and he called it an irony of fate.

BTS's 2020 hit 'Dynamite' was the band's first song to be what?

Fully recorded in English for the first time, 'Dynamite' came out in August 2020 to cheer listeners up during the pandemic. Until then the band had sung mostly in Korean.

What did BTS's 'Dynamite' achieve on the Billboard Hot 100?

Debuted at number one, which made BTS the first all-South Korean act to top the chart. Psy had come closest, when 'Gangnam Style' sat at number two for seven weeks in 2012 and never got past it.

Which British singer had a 2010 hit called 'Dynamite', co-written by Max Martin?

Taio Cruz sang it, but lyricist Bonnie McKee thought it the dumbest song she had ever written and sure to go nowhere. It reached number one in Britain and stayed 47 weeks on America's Hot 100.

Which boxer, billed as 'Kid Dynamite' early in his career, became the youngest world heavyweight champion at 20?

Mike Tyson stood under six feet, short for a heavyweight, yet his speed and aggression swamped bigger men. In November 1986 he knocked out Trevor Berbick in the second round to take the title.

On which 1970s sitcom did J.J. Evans make 'Dy-no-mite!' a national catchphrase?

Good Times director John Rich insisted the shout go into every episode, though producer Norman Lear and the actor who delivered it both had their doubts. It became the show's trademark.

Who played J.J. Evans, the character behind 'Dy-no-mite!'?

Jimmie Walker was a stand-up comic when he was cast as the family's eldest son. John Amos, who played his father, was only eight years older than him.

Napoleon Dynamite, the 2004 cult comedy, was filmed around the small town of Preston in which US state?

Idaho's legislature commended the film's makers in 2005 with a formal resolution. It praised the tater tots for promoting the state's most famous export, and declared that members voting no were 'freakin' idiots'.

In Napoleon Dynamite, how does Napoleon rescue his friend Pedro's campaign for class president?

He dances on stage to a Jamiroquai track, alone, after learning at the last minute that every candidate must put on a skit. The students give him a standing ovation, and Pedro wins the vote.

The wrestler known as the Dynamite Kid formed which tag team with his cousin Davey Boy Smith?

The British Bulldogs took the WWF tag team title at WrestleMania 2 in 1986. In their corner that night, cheering them on, was the rock star Ozzy Osbourne.

Which alternative name did dynamite carry in its inventor's patent?

Nobel's Safety Powder shared the billing, because his patent called the product 'dynamite, or Nobel's safety powder'. Safety was the sales pitch: the powder could be handled and shipped in a way the raw liquid never could.

Bertha von Suttner, later a famous anti-war campaigner, met Nobel in 1876 by answering his newspaper advertisement for what?

A secretary and housekeeper was what the advertisement asked for, and she soon left Paris to marry. The two wrote to each other until he died, and her letters against war are credited with putting a peace prize in his will.

To which city did Alfred Nobel's father Immanuel move the family in 1842?

St Petersburg was where Immanuel had rebuilt his fortunes, making sea mines for the Tsar's forces. There private tutors took over the boys' schooling, and as a teenager Alfred was fluent in five languages.

Dynamite fishing, which stuns whole shoals with a single blast, is blamed for wrecking which marine habitat?

Coral reefs shatter under the same shock that stuns the fish, and blasted stretches turn to loose rubble that is very slow to regrow. Though widely outlawed, the practice persists from Southeast Asia to East Africa.