4th of July celebrators in San Diego, Calif. got an extremely brief but oddly spectacular fireworks show in 2012 when a malfunction caused all of the pyrotechnics to detonate at once.

As you can see in the video below, Queen's anticipation-building anthem "We Will Rock You" hangs in the air after the unintentionally short display, adding inadvertent insult to injury as the confused crowd tries to figure out what happened. (Can you imagine being a parent explaining this to your disappointed children?)

As the Los Angeles. Times reports, what was supposed to be a choreographed, 18-minute long show wound up being over in just 15 seconds, to the disappointment of the hundreds of thousands of revelers who braved traffic and a long wait to see what was promised to be a "bigger and more intense" show than in previous years.

The San Diego "Big Bay Boom" fireworks show is a big enough deal to have its own website, and a note from the organizers explains that all pre-show tests of the firing signals worked properly, and promises that "the Garden State Fireworks team will be working throughout the night to determine what technical problem caused the entire show to be launched in about 15 seconds."

 

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