A New National Record, A Mysterious Substance on the Highway, and More

Tuesday, July 7th, 2026

Good morning! Welcome to The Tradesman, a 5-minute newsletter tailored just for America’s tradesmen.

Good new! The next two weeks are looking to be significantly cooler than last week, with the average high temperature hovering around 84 degrees.

Also, something crazy spilled on the highway last week. Find out what it was below.

Over the weekend, our nation's capital took a shot at breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest fireworks show ever, and it may have done it.

The current record for the largest fireworks display is a 2016 show in the Philippines that detonated 810,904 fireworks in just over an hour.

This past weekend, however, an estimated 850,000-plus fireworks were launched from Washington, D.C., which would break the previous record.

As of now, Guinness World Records has not announced whether the show has, in fact, beaten the record, as it is still completing its verification process.

Record or no, the show was pretty incredible. Check out the record-setting show here.

Also, over the weekend, the Honda Indy 200 was held in Lexington, Ohio.

The race took place along a 2.258-mile, 13-turn, natural-terrain road that included elevation changes, tight corners, a narrow racing ribbon, and more.

After 90 laps of high-speed twists and turns, Pato O'Ward took the checkered flag. The results are here.

Picture this: you're a crew of firefighters driving along the highway, when you notice a trail of red liquid.

Your mind begins to race, assuming the worst, and you and your crew decide to follow the trail in hopes of finding the source. Half expecting an unmarked van with suspicious weapons hanging out the window, you instead find a semitruck parked on the side of the road leaking … Frank's RedHot sauce?

That's what happened to a fire crew last Thursday when a semi traveling north on Interstate 71 in Delaware County began leaking 40,000 pounds of the hot sauce onto the highway. See the sauce spill here.

Four members of the Siders family face 16 counts each of child endangering after deputies found 16 children, ranging from 18 months to 18 years old, living in deplorable conditions inside a Vinton County home where authorities say they went undetected for about four years.

Court records show two of those charged, Gary Siders Jr., 36, and Elizabeth Siders, 33, were married in West Virginia in 2008 when he was 18 and she was 15.

Of the 16 children rescued, seven were taken to hospitals, including one who was in critical condition and had to be intubated. You can read more about the case here.

What is the best part about the 4th of July?