The spectacular — and fatal — show began with a flicker.

Winifred Duncan, a clerk at the S.S. Kresge store near Cleveland’s public square, was showing 4-year-old James Parker and his mother a sparkler on the morning of July 3, 1908.

The device, she assured them, was harmless. Moments later, a spark jumped to a nearby flag. Within seconds, a flame had reached and ignited the store’s larger fireworks.

“With a rattling roar the skyrockets, torpedoes and candles were set off, carrying the flame to every part of the store,” The Marion Daily Mirror reported the next day.