POP!

The force of a champagne cork can shatter glass–and it can also seriously injure your eye.

Warm bottles of champagne and improper cork-removal techniques cause serious, potentially blinding eye injuries each year. Champagne bottles contain pressure as high as 90 pounds per square inch–more than the pressure found inside a typical car tire. This pressure can launch a champagne cork at 50 miles per hour as it leaves the bottle.

Champagne cork mishaps can lead to a variety of serious eye injuries, including rupture of the eye wall, acute glaucoma, retinal detachment, ocular bleeding, dislocation of the lens, and damage to the eye’s bone structure. These injuries sometimes require urgent eye surgeries, and can even lead to blindness in the affected eye.

Ophthalmologist Monica L. Monica says, "When a champagne cork flies, you really have no time to react and protect your delicate eyes. Uncontrolled champagne corks can lead to painful eye injuries and devastating vision loss. We don’t want anyone to end up ringing in the year on an ophthalmologist’s surgery table."

Here’s how to handle that New Year’s Eve bottle: Chill sparkling wine and champagne to 45 degrees Fahrenheit or colder before opening. The cork of a warm bottle is more likely to pop unexpectedly.

Don’t shake the bottle. Shaking increases the speed at which the cork leaves the bottle thereby increasing your chances of severe eye injury.

Point the bottle at a 45-degree angle away from yourself and any bystanders and hold down the cork with the palm of your hand while removing the wire hood on the bottle.

Place a towel over the entire top of the bottle and grasp the cork.

Twist the bottle while holding the cork at a 45 degree angle to break the seal. Counter the force of the cork using downward pressure as the cork breaks free from the bottle.

For a while there, we didn’t think we were going to MAKE IT to 2013 (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show), but we are, so let’s make the most of it. One way to do that is to become a subscriber to this wonderful website, where we have something special, just for you, every single week! And if you subscribe for two years, you can keep track of your future with a FREE crop circle calendar!