Jefferson’s Bastille Day Machine in Action

on July 17, 2017

An animated version of Thomas Jefferson’s Rube Goldberg machine to celebrate Bastille Day on Friday:

(A) Thomas Jefferson pitches a baseball
(B) at an American-made Colt revolver
(C) which will shoot the lid off a French music box
(D) and start playing “Veillons au salut de l’Empire”
(E) causing Napoleon to salute
(F) pulling a string tied to the lever of a 19th-century French guillotine
(G) dropping the blade and striking a match
(H) which ignites an Exxon Valdez oil-covered bald eagle
(I) who majestically flies into the fireworks array, starting the celebration!