We all know how Guy Fawkes’ plot to blow up the House of Lords in 1605 was foiled at the last minute, sentencing him to a brutal death, and the creation of the annual event of Bonfire Night. However, the actual practicality and possibility of his gunpowder to destroy the building and kill the assembled King and Lords has been much debated since as, when inspected post discovery, the gunpowder was found to be of poor quality and the wooden barrels were damp. Luckily, we now have are own demolition ...

Ever gone Ten-Pin bowling? Well if you have, you may have wondered how the shiny, heavy, and often flying into the gutter bowling balls are made. If so, then check out this handy video that charts the multiple steps needed for modern ball production. Bowling has been a popular past-time of humans for thousands of years, something demonstrated in 1930 by anthropologist Sir Flinders Petrie, who with his team of archaeologists, unearthed bowling balls and pins in ...

Check out this video demonstrating a new iPhone controlled quadricopter from tech wizards Parrot. For more information about the Parrot AR.Drone, including an interview with one of its designers, look out for issue five of How It Works.

This video acts as a basic introduction to how NASA's Ares 1 launch system will carry Orion crew exploration vehicles into space. The Ares 1 and Orion are part of NASA's Constellation program, which upon the termination of its outgoing Space Shuttle fleet (currently scheduled for September 2010), will take over as the main spacecraft for human spaceflight. The Ares 1-X, which can be seen modeled in this video, was the prototype for the project and ...

For life to prosper water is a fundamental necessity, but if so, how did the the ancient Maya build such a massive empire without a river to draw water from? This, the first of five videos from the BBC documentary Secrets of the Mayan Underworld, demonstrates how through a series of underground, water-filled caves that run under the majority of the Yucatan, the Mayan Underworld – contrary to their belief that it was a realm of spirits – was actually the life-source of the entire area....

Take a look at this handy video detailing the multiple stages the Egyptians undertook when mummifying their deceased. While made famous by the ancient Egyptians, mummification is a process not just confined to their afterlife culture, as any corpse which has had its skin or organs preserved thanks to external chemicals, substances or extreme temperatures is classed as a mummy. Indeed, mummified corpses have been found all over the Earth, from Russia to the Americas, often preserved ...

Discover what it would be like to experience a suborbital spaceflight on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo in this impressive animation that takes you from launch to zero gravity and back down to Earth in six minutes In December, Britain's radical entrepreneur Richard Branson unveiled SpaceShipTwo, the custom-made spacecraft set to ferry eager – and rich – space enthusiasts off the planet for a once-in-a-lifetime trip beyond Earth's atmosphere. Tickets for the excursions, which can accommodate six passengers at a time, will set intrepid astronaut wannabes back an eye-watering $200,000....

Check out this video from English Heritage demonstrating the multiple stages necessary to fire a Brown Bess musket. The Brown Bess musket was the weapon of choice for riflemen during the rise of the British Empire and was used in numerous incarnations for over a hundred years. The musket, which is a .75 caliber flintlock, weighs over 10 pounds and is almost a meter and a half in length. Due to the many stages required to fire, as well as its unwieldily proportions in comparison to modern firearms, firing the musket ...

Check out this excellent animation from NASA which charts the life of a star from creation to white dwarf stage. Stars are created when groups of space dust and gases, due to internal nebula turbulence, collapse under their own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses a dense, hot core is formed which continues to collect dust and gas before turning into the heart of a protostar. Over millions of years this star continues to gather material ...

We've been enjoying the BBC's Life television series here at How It Works, especially when time-lapse photography has been on display. Here is a short clip showing this cinematography technique in action. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG17TsgV_qI[/youtube] Time-lapse photography works by shooting a series of frames at a significantly slower rate than that which they will be played back. So for example, instead of shooting and displaying 24 frames for a single second of video playback – the speed at which film is projected at – time-lapse footage may record at a single frame an hour ...