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| Italian woman finds live grenade in potato bag |
| 2007-03-01 |
| NAPLES, Italy – A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at the her local market found a live grenade among the spuds. "I found a bomb in the potatoes," Olga Mauriello said in a telephone interview with Reuters. "I went to the market to buy some potatoes and that's where the bomb was. But this bomb was covered in dirt, and I put it in water and got all dirt off. And then I realised 'It's a bomb'!" Police said the pine cone-shaped grenade, which had no pin and was still active, was the same type used by U.S. soldiers in Europe in World War Two. Authorities believe the mix-up happened at a farm in France, where the grenade was plucked from the ground along with potatoes. To the woman's relief, police and explosives experts in the small town of San Giorgio a Cremano, near Naples, recovered the grenade and safely detonated it on Wednesday. But Mauriello was still shaking off her close brush with death. It didn't look like a potato and it was heavier than one. But what if she had cooked it? "If I hadn't felt its weight, I wouldn't even have realised that it was a bomb," she said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #10 No snarky comments about a "hot potato" yet? I think you guys are slipping! |
| Posted by: Dar 2007-03-01 17:39 |
| #9 In the Ardennes region of France there remain dangerous stocks of buried WWI poisonous, volatile and explosive munitions that are similar to the left over WWII decaying nuclides in Japan but probally much more deadly. |
| Posted by: RD 2007-03-01 13:35 |
| #8 Don't they dig up this kind of stuff all the time there? In France, tons and tons and tons and tons and tons (see below), every year, and estimates on how long this will be going on is See wikipedia : In the Ardennes region of France, large-scale citizen evacuations were necessary during UXO removal operations in 2001. In the forests of Verdun French government "demineurs" working for the Department du Deminage still hunt for poisonous, volatile, explosive munitions and recover about 900 tons every year. The most feared are corroded artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas. According to the film "Aftermath", these demineurs "have gathered more than twenty million shells but have lost six hundred demineurs. At the current speed, France will be fully cleared and safe - in seven hundred years." French farmers still find many UXOs when ploughing their fields; the so-called "iron harvest." |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2007-03-01 12:14 |
| #7 Ooooh...a prize! |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-03-01 10:28 |
| #6 Maybe someone took the term "Potato Masher" a little too literal. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-03-01 08:25 |
| #5 Good thing she didn't try to peel it - would have really messed up her knife. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-03-01 07:23 |
| #4 Hey, you Irishmen over there, behave! |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-03-01 06:13 |
| #3 Don't they dig up this kind of stuff all the time there? |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-03-01 04:37 |
| #2 Yes, it does sound like a Pat & Mike. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2007-03-01 01:57 |
| #1 Oh, Mr Carcione, there's a pineapple in my potato bag. |
| Posted by: GK 2007-03-01 01:00 |