Chinese invented explosive entertainment

fireworks, familiar now in sound-and-light shows on dark evenings, to celebrate festivals and to entertain, are invented in China around ...

fireworks, familiar now in sound-and-light shows on dark evenings, to celebrate festivals and to entertain, are invented in China around 1,000 years ago following the invention of gunpowder in the first century CE. Bamboo tubes, filled with gunpowder, were thrown onto fires to create explosions at religious festivals, perhaps in the belief that the noise they made would scare off evil spirits. It is highly likely that some of these little bombs shot like rockets out of the fire, propelled by the gases they produced. The next step seems likely to have been to attach such charged bamboo tubes to sticks and fire them with bows. The earliest evidence of devices that could be described as firework rockets comes from a written report of the battle of Kai-Keng in 1232 during the war between China and Mongolia, in which the Chinese attacked with "arrows of flying fire." After Kai-Keng, the Mongols began to make rockets as well, and probably took these with them on their travels to Europe.