When she was in elementary school, a Houston woman watched her brother and his friends build a bomb out of Fourth of July fireworks. They wanted to use the bomb in the World War II games they played on a bayou near her home. The explosion was more dangerous than she realized, and set off a terrorism investigation.
“This was during the Cuban Missile Crisis and [the police] were questioning my mother about seeing strangers in the neighborhood, maybe even somebody Cuban-looking. They said, well, the magnitude of this explosion had blown an almost six-foot deep hole right above the Shell gas pipeline and it could have blown up our whole neighborhood.”
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Written by Caroline Covington.