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Dangerous Play (Playgrounds; Carnivals; Amusement Parks; Etc.)

They certainly go well with accidents, I think: "England's Glory is a brand of non-safety matches,

The 'safety' aspect of matches is to do with the use of phosphorus in the manufacture. Matches were originally made with white phosphorus which is dangerous both in manufacture and use.

This page explains it in depth -
(ReAgent Chemical Services, a UK chemical manufacturing company. Their website is fascinating.)

How Do Safety Matches Work?

In safety matches, the combustible chemicals are separated between the match head and the striking pad. So a safety match can't be struck on anything except the box it came in.
(I used to believe this was to stop children stealing matches to play with fire!)

Crucially, the highly dangerous white phosphorus found in early matches, which could spontaneously ignite at 30C in users' pockets was later replaced with red phosphorus. This ignites at 240C so trouser pocket-fires became less common until the 21st century when e-cigarettes arrived.
 
I recall this ride from Blackpool Pleasure Beach. I can't find anything on it but i recall being told that someone died on it many years previously when a crane caught one of the rockets and it ended up on the promenade:
 
Oh my word another one from Blackpool Pleasure Beach, the Wild Mouse. I'm sure that it would be illegal now it was so dangerous and yet we went on it tons of times. I have a photo of my brother not smiling as a kid. we had been on this ride and he knocked a front tooth out and had a big gash on his chin. I thought it was hilarious!

As an aside I wonder if there is an urban myth about death on fairground rides?
 
Last one 'cos I've had a drink so I apologise. A POV video of The Big One at Blackpool. I've been on this too. I looked behind me to see if I could see Deepdale from the top but i didn't get the time to orientate where Preston was:
 
The 'safety' aspect of matches is to do with the use of phosphorus in the manufacture. Matches were originally made with white phosphorus which is dangerous both in manufacture and use.

This page explains it in depth -
(ReAgent Chemical Services, a UK chemical manufacturing company. Their website is fascinating.)

How Do Safety Matches Work?

In safety matches, the combustible chemicals are separated between the match head and the striking pad. So a safety match can't be struck on anything except the box it came in.
(I used to believe this was to stop children stealing matches to play with fire!)

Crucially, the highly dangerous white phosphorus found in early matches, which could spontaneously ignite at 30C in users' pockets was later replaced with red phosphorus. This ignites at 240C so trouser pocket-fires became less common until the 21st century when e-cigarettes arrived.

Anyone remember London Lights? I think they were also know as Bengal Matches. These were super matches that burned in red and green. With a couple of boxes of these and some bangers, it’s a wonder we didn’t kill ourselves. London lights... tinfoil.... mini flare gun.


Just the thing for little kids on Bonfire Night.
 
There used to be a ride like that at Alton Towers in the 80's except it raised up higher and you stood on it in your own cage compartment round the edges, the g force or whatever pinning you to the back of your cage so there was no safety harness, just a thin metal chain … one year we watched it get up to full speed and as high as it could go and then some bloke on the ride threw up, spraying everyone in the first two lines of the que :twothumbs:
That's the one that I was talking about in post 101
 
Wild! .. the same type? .. I wonder how many others puked on that ride?
Exactly as you describe it. I only rode on it once, so couldn't remember the full details, but your reference to the metal chain (to do what?) and your description...yep.

Probably a whole lot puked. But how many died from choking on their puke and on that ride? As I said, I couldn't find any reference about the death occuring in my home town.
 
Oh my word another one from Blackpool Pleasure Beach, the Wild Mouse. I'm sure that it would be illegal now it was so dangerous and yet we went on it tons of times. I have a photo of my brother not smiling as a kid. we had been on this ride and he knocked a front tooth out and had a big gash on his chin. I thought it was hilarious!

As an aside I wonder if there is an urban myth about death on fairground rides?
"Don't stand up." You mean you weren't strapped in?
 
... As an aside I wonder if there is an urban myth about death on fairground rides? ...

I'm not sure what you're asking ...

Injuries and deaths on amusement rides in both fixed-location parks and mobile installations (e.g., traveling carnivals) are a real thing.

It's difficult to get a handle on the frequency and severity of such accidents, because the data is strewn across different jurisdictions, types, etc.

For example ... The Wikipedia lists of incidents / accidents is a hodge-podge of multiple specific lists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_amusement_park_incidents

This 2019 Safety Science article may be a good place to start (as a global overview):

Global incidence of theme park and amusement ride accidents
KathrynWoodcock
Safety Science
Volume 113, March 2019, Pages 171-179

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2018.11.014

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753518311238
 
I was wondering about urban myths that certain rides are 'cursed' and that word of mouth reports of deaths from the past are not based on fact. I recall being told, as on the video links I put on, of deaths on both the Wild Mouse and Rocket Ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. I'm not sure if these are urban myths or factual.

And we won't talk about 'Cloggy' on the Ghost Train...

As an aside I found this Trip Advisor review of the Wild Mouse ride. She writes "I can't believe I
queued up to be battered by a ride. I literally was thrown about in the cart. My head was thrashed back causing severe whiplash. " https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowU...asure_Beach-Blackpool_Lancashire_England.html
 
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This CRACKED article is the funniest thing I've read this week. It's a retrospective review of New Jersey's Action Park - arguably one of the most dangerous water parks / fun parks during its heyday in the 1980s. No ride was too risky to build and try (e.g., an enclosed water slide with a built-in loop-de-loop). Action Park is like what would have occurred if Hieronymus Bosch had designed a playground based on wild ideas from reckless kids ...


FULL STORY: https://www.cracked.com/article_28081_the-terrifying-saga-action-parks-loop-de-loop-slide.html
Here’s a piece about the park. One person went three times and left twice in an ambulance. You know I’d have left it after the one ambulance trip.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/deaths-drownings-blood-everywhere-inside-22534266
 
This article details the history of the giant stride - arguably the most dangerous playground device of all ...

GiantStride.jpg
Why you can't play on history's most thrilling piece of playground equipment

In an age of radium toothpaste, lead-paint baby toys and decorating Christmas trees with asbestos, even this 'mad fun' was deemed too dangerous for children

It was the most thrilling thing that had ever existed on a playground, before or since. In the words of Canadian history writer Anita May Draper, “those who’ve taken a spin on this ride agree it’s the most exciting one of all.” Denver Post columnist Jack Kisling once eulogized the apparatus as “mad fun.” When Iowa’s Quad-City Times canvassed its older readers for memories of the thing in 1991, they received a torrent of positive mail, with one woman even citing it as evidence that growing up during the Great Depression was “more fun.”

But it came at a ghastly cost: cracked skulls, shattered limbs, horrific lacerations and dead or permanently maimed children. In an age of radium toothpaste, lead-paint baby toys and decorating Christmas trees with asbestos, even this pleasure was deemed too dangerous for the world’s children. This is the forgotten story of the giant stride, the most notorious piece of playground equipment in history. ...

In its simplest form, the giant stride is a metal pole topped by a wheel and hung with an assortment of knotted ropes. Children would grab the ropes and begin circling the pole. Within seconds, they would find themselves able to take “giant strides” through the air as the centrifugal force propelled them outwards.

The danger quickly becomes obvious; with the apparatus quickly propelled to the speed of the largest and fastest child, riders who can’t maintain their grip on the rope are flung outwards at incredible speeds. ...

FULL STORY: https://nationalpost.com/news/why-y...-most-thrilling-piece-of-playground-equipment
 
I remember as a kid, me and some mates made a swing out of some rope and an old scaffold plank, it was strung over a tree branch across a stream, about 6 of us were on it one day and one of the smaller kids jumped off of it in fear as it was swinging (it was pretty hairy), as he jumped off the swing began twisting erratically and another friend who was stood against the tree (the swing was strung from) and recieved a battering ram style injury as the swing ploughed into is chest, breaking 4 of his ribs.
 
And here are some playgrounds to make any health and safety officer have a stroke

There may well be a better thread for the following exciting episode of old-man-yells-at-clouds, but I am genuinely weirded out by the thumbnails Youtube videos use to bait viewers in. Whether it be ridiculously overloaded vehicles with dozens of wheels, aircraft with jet engines attached any old how, or - as above - slides with child graters installed. I assume it's not some bizarro AI at work, so someone, somewhere, is spending time and effort to photoshop these images. It's the visual equivalent of "number seven will make you wince", I know, but it's a terrible indictment of expectations of gullibility (which I grant is difficult to set a lower bound for) and the demands of the all-devouring algorithm. And, of course, it combines to make Youtube almost useless for its original purpose.
 
I was just about to post the maypole ride , but it's already been done. We used to love that when we were kids. It was a in village called Riponden last time I looked , probably been removed years ago though. Played on it a kid when I went to friends house their. Our local park back home in Hebden Bridge had some wild rides. Plus a paddling pool!,

I've watched a few things about that Action Park , extremely dangerous place but we would have loved it as teens!! The loop the loop water slide! The owner used to send crash test dummy's down first on any new ride , and if they didn't come out headless he would offer $100 to the teen employees to be Guinea pigs. Crazy place.

It's true about the Wild Mouse at Blackpool too..... I last went about 6yrs ago, never again. Aches and pains galore , too old for that nonsense now, got enough aches without causing more !
 
There are three things that come to mind from my youth in this thread....

We used to have these concrete forms, used for sewers and whatnot (unused, of course) on the playground. Basically, giant, hollow, concrete cylinders and you weren't a "man" until you could climb up and sit on top one. Being solid concrete, there were many scraped knees and such in the scramble to get to the top.

Later, in middle school, we had a little chain-linked bridge about 2 inches above the ground that had chains as guard rails (so-to-speak). Someone thought, "Oh, hey, we should safety-pad those chains, in case a child gets pinched." We developed a game (of sorts) where one kid would hold on and the other 10-or-so of us would rock that "safety chain" back and forth until the kid flipped over it. This ended when one kid flipped too hard and had to be taken to the hospital. Thus endeth our safety lecture.

Lastly, (oddly enough, earliest-ly) when I went to daycare, we had this amazing playground out back. This included a wooden platform you could climb up to which had a loose bridge (planks of wood attached with chains so we could all jump on it and it would send the person in the middle flying when we had our rhythm down). At the end of this platform, there was a metal pole you could slide down. I was terrified of stepping off the wood and clenching onto the pole to slide down. Still, it didn't stop me from running from one end of the bridge to the other, jumping off *past* the pole and into the sandbox below. I believe I still hold the record for jumping furthest (enough to grab on to the chainlink fence just beyond) before landing. :D
 
Oh my word another one from Blackpool Pleasure Beach, the Wild Mouse. I'm sure that it would be illegal now it was so dangerous and yet we went on it tons of times. I have a photo of my brother not smiling as a kid. we had been on this ride and he knocked a front tooth out and had a big gash on his chin. I thought it was hilarious!

As an aside I wonder if there is an urban myth about death on fairground rides?

Wild mouse is definitely still their when I went a few years ago... Now that rocket ride I like as a kid, HATE it now! It just looks like your only supported by a thin metal chain, and it goes very near to a roller coaster too. Last time I went on the rockets a very large woman and her huge son were behind us, I thought "please hold" , no disrespect but the chains didn't look strong enough to support the weight of 4 heavy adults. I had my eyes closed all way through , hated it , this is supposed to be a kids ride too.

I like that "Derby racer" , very old historical ride been there since the 30s, it's like a big/grown up version of a carousel with horses. The horses are BIG/high, no seatbelt a, you just hold on, when it gets going it's very fast. Love that. I'm surprised more people haven't fallen off, you are going to break something coming off that , fast ride.

And another horse themed /very little "safety harness" (you just have a flimsy chain go over your lap) is the Steeplechase, one of only 2 in the world no less . I know that because I'm a bit of a vintage fairground geek , but yeah , parts are high up , fast and you on,y have a chain on!.

Love Blackpool pleasure beach to be honest. Good safety record too. AFAIK, the only death was the lads fault, not the park (young lad of 14 stood up on the grand national wooden coaster and got decapitated sadly ) I know they are very good at doing all the safety checks, shut certain rides in bad wind and rain ect.
 
The famous Steeplechase , one of only 2 in the world . What worries me is that it would be very easy to fall off if the lap chain came loose, and in some of the high sections of track , there's other rides below. You could fall off and get killed by a speeding coaster ? I still go on though. One of the tamer rides and a fave.



The famous and historic Derby Racers. I was amused to read some of the comments, yep, people make the Miami that it's a "baby's kids carousel. That has caught out many a person I tell thee....... It's a white knuckle carousel! Fast as hell , very unique I've not seen anything like it elsewhere. It's been restored/preserved which I'm happy about as it is a vintage piece and so many of us have happy memories of this place, glad it's been kept and not replaced with some neon "modern" thing which we have enough of. You don't get any more old school seaside than these old BP rides.


I think a lot of people will be rediscovering the old fashioned British seaside hol this year with all the travel restrictions. Be good for the seaside businesses.

Anyway , I'll try stay on topic now as these are not really playgrounds :) .

Oh, action park docu here too. A good watch.

 
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I did myself a mischief when I was about four. The big kids would jump off the carousel before it stopped. I tired and hurt myself, even to this day that ankle aches from time to time.
 
I did myself a mischief when I was about four. The big kids would jump off the carousel before it stopped. I tired and hurt myself, even to this day that ankle aches from time to time.

What sort of carousel?

A
1614041010733.png


B
playground roundabout | My childhood memories, Childhood memories ...


Or, seeing as it's actually you, this?

1614041010897.png
 
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