This teacher kept a 40mm mortar shell on his desk and used it as a paperweight. He tried to crush a bug with it and it went off, taking his hand with it.
Story Here

~Rob

 

guess he found out it was live pretty quick

 

...Good for him...

What bothers me, is not that an idiot lost at least part of his hand, (I am not a cruel person), but that he was a TEACHER. God help our kids.

 

Everyone sure knows the parents aren't doing it these days.

 

Who uses a 40mm explosive round to hunt?!?!

 

I wonder if he uses a lighter to check the level of gas in his cars tank?

 

I can think of a few people who I'd expect to do that.

Hoss, Wannadiesel, Jim Lane...

 

at least if you use 40mm to hunt you shouldn't miss your target, at least whats left

 

Now why would you say that?


Did you see us last week when we were walking barefoot on the beach "pickin up shells"?

Jim

 

Better yet, who dosen't

If a .22 is weak, and a 30-06 is small by what you guys tell me, the next lodgical size is 40mm.

Reminds me of my grand father, he gives me this cone shaped thing and I ask him what it is. It's a warhead off of a 1 ton shell they fired from the ships, (not sure of size) I wouldn't touch it till he said it was de-fused. Pretty cool looking though, I just wish he had the whole shell . Talk about a conversation piece. I also have a de-milled gernade, pin and all, scares the heck out people that don't know it's de-milled

 

The worst part of the whole story, it was probably a cockroach and it probably survived!!!

 

He probably found it hunting on a military base somewhere, there's tons of that stuff around. Locally, people buy crushed clam shells to build their driveways with. The shells are dredged from just offshore, and mixed in are quite a few pieces of live munitons from WWI and II. People find live grenades in their driveways, mortar rounds, machine gun ammo, etc. I think it was dumped years ago by the military. Every once in a while you'll hear in the news about someone finding something in their driveway or someone's driveway getting blown up. There are some work boats around here who have dredged up live bombs in their nets, big ones dropped by airplanes. Blew the stern off one a couple years ago. Several military bombing ranges on islands around here. I've found quite a bit of stuff like that while looking for arrowheads on the beach or marsh. Found a live 50 cal machine gun round last summer, dated 1942. Bullet was mostly rusted away, but still had powder and primer in it.

 

Interesting post. I live in Ventura. The local paper made no mention of the teacher hitting a bug at all, it just spontaneously went off. He found it many years ago, as a kid, and has had it ever since, even played with it. I have read reports of WWII shells in Europe found in fields going off when found and moved.