Lethal Laundry Situation Averted

Bournemouth, United Kingdom Hanging laundry out to dry may be tedious housework but seldom is it life-threatening. This was not the case for a Bournemouth family whose clothesline pole was inadvertently placed directly on top of a WWI hand grenade.

The man who made the discovery while pushing a wheelbarrow across his back garden noticed the "potato-sized" device when the front wheel of the wheelbarrow turned up the soil around the pole. He was alarmed to find the dangerous UXO buried directly beneath the pole, which his wife regularly hammered down into the soil.

Explosives experts from the Royal Navy EOD Team responded to remove the Mills bomb (the popular name for a series of British-made hand grenades) for a controlled explosion in the sea. Luckily for the family the grenade was densely-packed with soil which may have prevented the device from triggering when the pin fell out.