E-Cigarettes Safe? Watch This Guy Get Victimized By Exploding One

An e-cigarette explodes violently in
this guy's jacket pocket, in an image from a security camera.

We've all heard of the new Samsung phones bursting into flames, but it turns out e-cigarettes are just as dangerous.

According to Slate, a French nightclub owner was badly hurt when his e-cigarettes blew up in his jacket pocket. Dramatic surveillance video of the incident is at the bottom of this post.  

Amine Britel was outside his nightclub last week in Toulouse, France

Says Slate:

"'All of a sudden I heard a loud band and a noise like a flare had gone off, only ten times louder. After the shock of the explosion, I realized that I had caught fire,' Britel said, according to Ubergizmo. 'I did not really understand what was happening to me. The pain only came afterwards.'"

Britel was hospitalized with severe burns and his fingers melted to his jacket. He plans to sue the Chinese manufacturer of the e-cigarette batteries.

E-cigarette batteries have caused all kinds of mayhem, it turns out.

According to Wired, a Colorado man broke his neck, lost some teeth and had burns and facial fractures when his e-cigarette blew up. Teenagers in California and Tennesee were badly injured by exploding vaping devices.

The e-cigarettes are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which are in many, many gadgets, including the laptop on which I'm writing this.

However, most computer and mobile phone manufacturers have exacting standards for batteries, notes Wired, but not all less sophisticated devices like vaping things are so carefully built.

Plus, some people are altering their e-cigarettes, which makes them more dangerous.

Smoking regular cigarettes is known to be very dangerous. Vaping is dangerous too, for some of the same reasons, and as it turns out, because a few explode. Explosions are dangerous, as the Frenh nightclub owner found out in the video, below.

Man Loses Leg While Blowing Up Stuff With Tannerite, Which Is Apparently A Thing

In this fuzzy photo, the guy holding the gun is about to lose
one of his legs by shooting a lawm mower packed
with Tannerite. Shrapnel sheared off one of his legs
below the knee.  

Today, we're on the "Hold my beer, Watch This!" beat, in which people, almost always guys do something stupid, usually involving guns, explosions, beer, bad planning or some combination of the above.

This time we go to Georgia, where we learn a 32 year old guy lost one of his legs below the knee in an accident. Frankly, a dopey accident, though I still feel bad the guy was injured so badly.

Apparently, something called Tannerite is a thing. It's perfectly legal to buy. It's made up of a couple chemicals that are fairly safe, except when you fire a high speed object into it, like a bullet.

Then it explodes dramatically. Good Ole boys seem to like to fire guns into objects loaded up with tannerite, because they make fun explosions. Dangerous ones, too.

So it was in Walton County, Georgia recently when some guys decided it would be fun to shoot a riding mower loaded with three pounds of Tannerite.

The inevitable happened. David Thomas Presley, 32, shot the mower, it exploded, and a piece of shrapnel blased off the lower half of one of his legs, says the Athens (Georgia) Banner-Herald.

The Walton County Sheriff's office felt compelled to put the following message on their Facebook page. The sheriff's office was being Captain Obvious, but I guess you have to be nowadays.

Here's the Facebook message about Tannerite:

"Yes, it is legal and no, we can't make people stop doing it. But why folks, just why?.....Please adhere to the warnings and use this dangerous material with caution or maybe consider other less dangerous hobbies."

Fat chance of that. YouTube is full of videos of yeehaws blowing up things with Tannerite. And as noted in the Athens Banner-Herald, a Michigan man  blew something up with Tannerite and shrapnel tore off his leg, too.

I'm sure history will keep repeating itself with this stuff, too.

Here's a USA Today video report on the Georgia incident. A couple brief moments in the video aren't for the faint of heart.

Tree Must Go. Don't Cut It Down, Blow It Up!!!!

My husband Jeff is no fun.

This is the FUN way to get rid of unwanted trees.  

See, there's some trees on our St. Albans, Vermont property that have to come down.

Some of the trees are dead, others are leaning toward the house, a couple of them are shading the garden or just plain too ugly.

I like loud things with lots of booms, smoke, drama. Which makes blowing the trees up, as I've seen in quite a few videos on YouTube.

The ever-sensible Jeff has a problem with this. He would prefer that we call a tree surgeon to carefully get rid of the larger dead trees closest to the house and shed.

Jeff is fine with me taking a chain saw to any tree that needs to go that won't cause major damage no matter which way it falls. And really, I do find chainsaws fun, so that's OK.

Yes, yes, I know Jeff is absolutely right about hiring the tree surgeon and his distaste for the explosion idea. I'm sure my property insurer is also pleased that Jeff's common sense is prevailing.

But man, wouldn't it be fun to blow up those offending trees? I could advertise it in advance and charge  spectators admission. That income from the spectators would take care of some of the repair bills and maybe some of the insurance deductable.

However, I'll go along with Jeff. Because I'd rather live in a house with its roof and walls intact, with no broken tree branches protruding into the living room and interfering with our view of the television.

I'll just fantasize about the explosions. A man can dream, can't he. And watch fun videos, like the one below:




ve been enamored by the idea of