Posted on 09/05/2005 8:09:44 PM PDT by SmithL
Anchorage -- Yale Metzger wants the Anchorage Police Department to replace his cannonball. Police officers say they blew it up to protect the public.
Metzger said he called police last week to have them examine the cannonball he found in Cordova. Instead, he said, the bomb squad showed up at his home last week with a remote-controlled robot, hauled away the cast iron ball and blew it up.
The police are calling Metzger "an idiot" for carrying the incendiary device around in his truck, then bringing it into downtown Anchorage, where they say it could have sent shrapnel flying for blocks had it exploded.
Metzger, 45, an attorney, found the 4-inch, 8-pound, cast iron ball last summer while excavating property he had purchased. It was unearthed in what most recently was a snow dump.
Metzger put the ball in the back of his pickup, where it rolled around for a year, he said. Over time he began to investigate how a cannonball, a projectile that stopped being used more than a century ago, could have ended up in Cordova.
Once the ball was in Anchorage, Metzger was concerned the ball could be still active. He wanted to know if his cannonball was solid or hollow, and if it was hollow, if it had volatile black powder.
The bomb squad took one look at it in Metzger's garage and treated it like a bomb seconds away from blowing.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
don't you need a cannon for a cannon ball to be effective?
Not if you drop it on your foot.... (grin)
I don't think effectiveness was their main concern.
PING!
It's not like a cannon ball will explode.
It's a chunk of metal, that's my question, why did they need a bomb squad for some cast iron? In that case, bowling balls could be incendiary devices.
"where it rolled around for a year"
Funny stuff.
ROFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!
If you read the article, it was in fact a shell, not a ball, though it was round.
It was hollow and contained black powder.
Well, duh, you expect me to read the entire article and deprive you all of making fun of me? How dull would that be?
back and forth, back and forth, wham,rrrrrr bam! Stop..rrrr...bam, go,rrrrrrr...bam, back and forth, back and forth.
Why didn't he go crazy in the first few weeks?
He was holding off until they blew it up.
Lots of Civil War artillery shells have been defused, and are now quite collectible. Not to mention historic artifacts.
farmers in france still die every year from WWI (not WWII) artillery shells
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