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Investigators said they were told by witnesses that the 62-year-old man had been drinking when he fashioned a device using a motorcycle muffler, a piece of pipe, gunpowder, match heads and gasoline.

OCEANSIDE, Calif. (AP) A 21-year-old man was killed in a backyard gunpowder explosion Thursday afternoon, police said. The victim, Nedrick Aaron Walker, was trying to make a cannon with several friends, said Oceanside police Lt. Rick Sing. Walker had cut the ends off shotgun shells and was dumping powder into a metal pipe when the explosion occurred. Sing said he didn't know what caused the powder to combust. ``All indications are it was an accident,'' he said. The blast went off in Walker's face and he died at the scene from head wounds, according to the county Medical Examiner's office....

WOODSIDE, Del. -- State fire officials say a Woodside-area man was seriously burned last night in an explosion after he poured gunpowder into a charcoal grill and ignited it. Michael Chionchio of the state Fire Marshal's Office says the 50-year-old man suffered first-degree burns to his face and third-degree burns to the hand he used to light the black powder. The man, whose name is not being released pending an investigation, was taken to the Kent General Hospital, where he is being treated. Chionchio says the man was alone in the back yard of a home in the 100 block...

Before anyone jumps all over me, I DID do a search. Here is what answers.com says: A primer is a small, disposable copper or brass cup, 4 to 6mm in diameter (standard sizes are 0.175 inches and 0.210 inches for handgun and rifle cartrdiges). In the cup is a precise amount of stable, but shock-sensitive explosive mixture, with ingredients such as lead azide or potassium perchlorate. Here is my question: if we were to take apart an UNFIRED round, and look at the primer, what would we see? I get the idea that the primer is a ?sealed cylinder (like...

INDEX Gentleman's Magazine - Gunpowder June 1740. Volume 10. Friday, 20. - Complaint having been made to the Lords of the Admiralty that the Gunpowder used by the 3 Men of War when they took the Princessa was weaker than the Powder taken in the said Ship in Proportion of 7 to 12, it was thought proper to make a publick Tryal; in order thereto some Gunpowder was taken out of each of the above 4 Ships, put into 4 Boxes at Portsmouth which were sealed up by some Officers of the Navy and Ordnance, and sent to Town, and...

Gunpowder Plot would have devastated London 00:01 05 November 03 NewScientist.com news service The area potentially affected by the blast covers a large area of contemporary London (Image: IOP/Guildhall Library) A new analysis by physicists shows that if the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to destroy the English parliament and kill the King had succeeded, it would have taken a large part of central London with it. Experts from the Centre for Explosion Studies, at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, used modern methods to estimate that severe structural damage would have been sustained by buildings up to half a kilometre away. The...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A potentially explosive situation in downtown Tallahassee was averted when an alert motorist realized a truck carrying gunpowder was headed the wrong direction. An employee of the St. Marks Powder Factory, a gunpowder manufacturer just south of Tallahassee, was driving home Wednesday about 4 p.m. when he saw a tractor trailer loaded with explosive material leaving the company headed on a main route into Tallahassee. Typically, trucks carrying explosives are routed around downtown Tallahassee, police said. The employee tried to flag down the driver but couldn't get him to stop so he called police. Officers stopped...