Civil war munition claims another life.
 

A Civil War collector dies when 140 year old cannon ball explodes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080502/...lCuAZQ8ShH2ocA


"More than 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant, the cannonball was still powerful enough to send a chunk of shrapnel through the front porch of a house a quarter-mile from White's home in this leafy Richmond suburb."

Based on the story, it seems unbelieveable that it could have detonated. But explosives were made to kill, no matter when or where.........

The article said he was drilling into the ball or grinding it or something along those lines.

+1 for Darwin?

I'm surprised the powder was still good.

They had a guy here in ore-gone blow his legs off when he was trying to seperate a WWI 37mm shell for the brass. (meth head?) This just happened a few days ago.

How very tragic :nope:

The only positive being that he lost his life doing what he enjoyed most.

In my area of the UK fisherman off the coast occasionaly get mines off the two world wars entangled in their nets. The clear guidance is to attach a marker buoy and decouple the nets from the boat.

What do the majority of them still do though ?

They leave the nets attached and hang about waiting for bomb disposal to arrive.

I suspect/fear that one day a sudden swell will push the mine into making physical contact with the trawlers hull and, the rest will be history as they say.

I'm surprised more fishing boats (or any boats) don't run into these.:help:

As we learned in EOD school. Black Powder never desensitizes.

In the 1950's and 1960's there were several cases in the US of Civil War cannon balls "spontaneously" detonating.

What had happened was that these cannon balls were wet inside. People found them, shined them up and put them up on display above their fireplace. In some cases it can take 100 years for it to dry out and then the powder is just as powerful as the day it was made.

So please, if you ever find any type of live ordnance, please have it inspected by competent military or civilian EOD.

As previous posters have written, these pieces of ordnance were specifically designed to explode and kill people.

I live off the north east coast (Tyne) which was a very large port and shipbuilding centre during both wars.

Many of the mines that people come across are our own :doh:

The French army is still collecting a quater of a million tons of left over bombs, sheels and explosive from farmers every year!:o

According to a fisherman buddy of mine they pull this stuff up in their nets a lot more often than is reported.

Here in Germany we still have problems with plenty of dud bombs in the ground too. There is hardly a week where they don't have to evacuate some people do disarm those things.:-?