4,000-Pound Wake-up Call

Seelze, Germany Some 14,000 people were awakened by police in the middle of the night to demands to evacuate their homes after a potentially dangerous WWII bomb was discovered in the town of Seelze, near Hannover.

The massive 4,000-pound British bomb was considered so dangerous that officials ordered the evacuation, stopped rail traffic in the area, and closed a nearby canal to shipping. Residents were sent to emergency shelters. Three nursing homes had to be evacuated by ambulance.

Residents who refused to leave immediately caused a four hour delay before a bomb disposal team could remove the three detonators on the device and safely defuse the munition.