Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia (AFP/Getty Images) (Getty Images) According to history.com, many experts believe that fireworks originated in China sometime between 600 and 900 A.D., where they were used in religious ceremonies to ward off evil spirits, and spread to Europe during the 13th century. The precursor to modern fireworka was developed in Italy in the 18th century, reports wisegeek.com, when the Italians started creating self-propelled aerial shells that allowed for more impressive pyrotechnic displays. Today, fireworks are used...

Members of the Old Guard attend the reopening ceremony of the Statue of Liberty on the first day it is open to the public after Superstorm Sandy on July 4, 2013 on the Liberty Island in New York City. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images) NEW YORK -- The Statue of Liberty finally reopened on the Fourth of July months after Superstorm Sandy swamped its little island as Americans across the country celebrated freedom and President Barack Obama urged citizens to live up...

A giant chrome brushed aluminum skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus, made by French sculptor and painter Philippe Pasqua, stands at the pier of riverboat company Bateaux-Mouches on June 12, 2013, in Paris. (Claire Lebertre/AFP/Getty Images) A T-Rex is on the loose along the Seine River in Paris, poised to take a bite out of the Eiffel Tower -- and attract the Tower's tourists. The outdoor art installation is a realistic rendering of a tyrannosaurus rex fossil. It'sa 4-meter-high, 7-meter-long monster, built...

This September 2010 photo provided by Andrew Nosal shows leopard sharks at La Jolla Shores Beach in La Jolla, Calif. The sharks attract onlookers when they come close to shore from June to early December, peaking between August and September. (AP Photo/Andrew Nosal) LA JOLLA, Calif. — Just beyond the breakers at La Jolla Shores Beach, hundreds of dark figures cruise through the sandy shallows like a scene in a horror movie. In most cases, the sight of one shark,...

Rain Room, MoMA PS1, New York City Members of the public experience 'Rain Room,' an art installation by Random International, at the Barbican Centre in London, England. It features a field of falling water that pauses wherever a human body is detected, and will be part of a MoMA PS1 exhibition in NYC. (Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images) For years, artists have been drawn to the beauty of nature, making it the subject of their work, as seen in everything from...

Investigators walk past wreckage from a Boeing 777 airplane that crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport July 6, 2013 in San Francisco, California. (NTSB/Twitter) Your chances of surviving an airplane crash, like the recent crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport, are surprisingly good.More than 95 percent of the airplane passengers involved in a crash survive, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).Despite this reassuring statistic, many people adopt a fatalistic attitude toward...

Spending six months in isolation in a cabin in Siberia might sound like an extreme way to get some peace and quiet, but that's just what French travel writer Sylvain Tesson set out to do in 2010. From February to July, Tesson lived in a cabin on Lake Baikal, 75 miles from the nearest village and a few hours' walk from the next neighbor, according to The Economist. "I wanted to experiment with the simple life and claim back time,"...

Officials from Death Valley National Park are urging visitors to stop frying eggs on park grounds after a video demonstration posted on the park's YouTube account went viral and inspired a hot-weather, egg-frying frenzy. As the park marked the 100th anniversary of its world record for the hottest temperature ever recorded -- 134 degrees on July 10, 1913 -- park officials posted a plea on its official Facebook pagefor visitors to leave their eggs at homeas the park has become...

A giant balloon shaped like the head of Darth Vader lifts off in Putrajaya, Malaysia on March 17, 2011. (Saeede Khan/AFP/Getty Images) A hot air balloon ride can be a beautiful experience, both going up in one to see the landscape around you, or watching them rise majestically from the ground. So why does a hot air balloon float? Archimedes' Principle states when an object is placed in water, if the weight of the object is less than that of...

The trees look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, with their furry trunks and thin magenta branches opening up into the sky like a palm tree. But Singapore's 18 supertrees are more technology than plant. Constructed of concrete, photovoltaic panels, metal, and thousands of bromeliads, ferns, and orchids, the 80-to-160-feet supertrees are brightening up Singapore's skyline and cleaning the air. The supertrees are part of an extensive project to beautify the downtown district of Marina Bay, and hopefully...

The Crystal Lagoon's pool in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Crystal Lagoons) Is it possible that the world’s largest pool could also be one of the most environmentally friendly? Chile-based company Crystal Lagoons thinks so. The company’s technology is being used for the first time for the dual purposes of recreation and water desalination in 12 lagoons that total 100 hectares of water in the middle of the desert in the Egyptian Citystars Sharm El Sheikh tourist development. “These giant crystalline lagoons,...

A model for scale, seated on the 10-foot horse constructed from driftwood. (Photo Credit: Jeffro Uitto, Knock on Wood) When Jeffro Uitto gets to work on a project, he's not just drawing inspiration from his surroundings -- he's also battling the elements. Uitto is an artist in Tokeland, Wash. and he relies entirely on found pieces of driftwood to build his sculptures. He creates a combination of furniture and artistic pieces, some on commission and some drawn from his own...