For the benefit of my American friends, we will be having a quick history lesson. In the United States, fireworks are used on the 4th of July, and New Year's Eve. However, there is only ONE real use for fireworks night in Britain. Also known as fireworks night, or bonfire night, the 5th of November is commonly called Guy Fawkes night.
Guy Fawkes (1570 -1606) was a Yorkshireman. After fighting for the Catholic Spanish in the Eighty Years War (against Protestant Dutch reformers), Fawkes returned to England, where he was planning a Catholic rebellion. He was introduced to Thomas Wintour and Robert Catesby, the latter planning to restore a Catholic monarch to the English throne by assassinating King James I.
After managing to secure a lease to a cellar under the House of Lords, the plotters began stockpiling gunpowder, in an attempt to blow up parliament (hence the name, the Gunpowder Plot). Suspicion led to the cellar being searched by authorities, and on the morning of 5th November, 1605, Fawkes was arrested before the attack could take place.
Catesby fled, and was shot dead on 8th November, 1605, after a standoff. Fawkes, Wintour, and two other conspirators - Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes - stood trial the following January. On 31st January, Wintour, Rookwood, and Keyes were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as was the custom of the day. On his climb up the scaffold, Fawkes fell - or more likely jumped - broke his neck, and died instantly.
Since then, the British have commemorated the day with fireworks, and with large bonfires. Atop the bonfires is invariably an effigy of Guy Fawkes, known simply as a "Guy".
Guy Fawkes by William Warby is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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