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Forty thousand shells were being loaded onto four barges in the city's Staten Island borough on Saturday in preparation for the massive celebration.
• The exact location is kept secret for security reasons.
• The barges will sit on the Hudson River for the show to be seen by an estimated 3 million people watching live in New York and New Jersey, plus millions more on television. Grammy-award winning musician Usher has created the soundtrack.
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• BASTIA, Corsica (AP) -- Riders at the Tour de France know to expect the unexpected. But nothing could have prepared them for the mayhem that turned Saturday's first stage of the 100th Tour into a demolition derby on two wheels.
• Seemingly for the first time at the 110-year-old race, one of the big buses that carry the teams around France when they're not on their bikes got stuck at the finish line, literally wedged under scaffolding, unable to move. The timing couldn't have been worse: The blockage happened as the speeding peloton was racing for home, less than 12 miles out.
• Fearing the worst -- a possible collision between 198 riders and the bus -- race organizers took the split-second decision to shorten the race. Word went out to riders over their radios and they adapted tactics accordingly, cranking up their speed another notch to be first to the new line, now 1.8 miles closer than originally planned.
• Then, somewhat miraculously, the bus for the Orica Greenedge team wriggled free. So organizers reverted to Plan A. Again over the radios, word went out to by-now confused riders and teams that the race would finish as first intended -- on a long straightaway alongside the shimmering turquoise Mediterranean, where an expectant crowd waited to cheer the first stage winner of the 100th Tour.
• Then, bam! Two riders collided and one of them went down, setting off a chain of spills that scythed through the pack like a bowling ball.
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