Greece's annual rocket war

Two villages in Greece spend a year making 50,000 homemade rockets, sort of like overbuilt bottle rockets, and then on one night of the year they fire them at each other. The objective is to ring the bell in each other's church tower - while mass is being held.



I lived in a small farming village in Germany from 1983-1986. New Years Eve there was a rocket and fireworks extravaganza at the stroke of the New Year. Two of my neighbors, one on each side, shot rockets toward each other's open, second-floor windows for 20 minutes. In the street, rocket duels went on from one end of the street to another for more than a half hour.