Expecting Father Dies After Accidental Gender-Reveal Party Explosion

An expecting father's life was tragically cut short this past weekend after a freak accident happened while he was preparing for a gender-reveal party for him and his girlfriend to announce the coming of their son. 

28-year-old Liberty, New York resident Christopher Pekny was killed after an accidental explosion occurred in a garage where he and his brother, Michael Pekny, were setting up a device that was originally supposed to reveal to family and friends the gender of his soon-to-be-born son. The accident, which was described by Christopher's oldest brother Peter Pekny Jr. as "the freakiest of freak accidents that I could ever imagine," seriously injured Michael and fatally wounded Christopher. 

According to a report from the New York Times, the device Christopher and Michael were setting up involved a pipe and explosive material, but the exact cause of the explosion is still under investigation by state police. 

But this isn't the first time a gender-reveal party has ended in disaster and unnecessary loss in recent years. 

In 2017, an Arizona gender-reveal party that involved an explosive material called Tannerite went horribly wrong, sparking a wildfire that burned nearly 47,000 acres, caused more than $8 million in damage, and took firefighters a week to put out. 

In 2019, a Texas pilot crashed his plane during a flight in which he was to dump 350 gallons of pink water to help a couple reveal that they were having a girl. (Fortunately, this incident had no casualties.)

And in 2020, a "smoke-generating pyrotechnic device" used during a gender reveal was responsible for another wildfire that burned through nearly 10,000 acres in California's San Bernardino County.

Considering all of the destruction and chaos a lot of gender-reveal parties cause, and how they are literally used as a way to uphold and reinforce the antiquated gender binary, maybe it's time we do away with this weird tradition?