Falmouth, Maine The Goodwill store was evacuated after employees found a hand grenade in the donation bin. According to Goodwill employees, the company has a protocol for this type of donation in which they immediately evacuated the store and notify the police.

Officers from the Falmouth Police Department responded and called in the bomb squad, who determined the grenade was inert. The bomb squad took the grenade for disposal.

Following the incident, Goodwill issued a reminder that they do not accept grenades, live or not, as donations. The reminder read in part, "we have old antique items in our homes, in our barns that we might want to donate, but just give it an extra glance before you do, because it can be really scary for our employees."

Vallejo, California A bomb squad was called to the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum in California after someone brought in a live grenade as a donation. Museum staff set the object outside away from visitors, alerted authorities, and evacuated the building. Police responded to cordon off the area and notify Travis Air Force Base EOD. Technicians x-rayed the device and deemed it safe to transport back to base.

According to Trevor Allen, the museum's executive director, the grenade donation was an "innocent mistake" on behalf of a well-meaning donor. He credited operations manager Paul Goodrum for identifying the potential threat of the ordnance. No injuries were reported, and the museum was re-opened to the public.

Shetland, United Kingdom An ordnance item brought into Scalloway Primary School was removed safely destroyed at the Scord quarry by an EOD team from Faslane. The school was evacuated after "historic ordnance" found at a local beach was brought into the school. Police and Coastguard teams responded to the scene and evacuated the building by sending children home.

[More]

Glasglow, Scotland a gardener / handyman working on a residential property in Pollok came across a rusty projectile buried in the landscaping. Curiosity got the best of him and he asked the homeowners if he could keep the rusty relic. The homeowners did not object so the young man put the projectile in his backpack.

After finishing work for the day, the gardener rode home on his bike which was five minutes away. A few days later, the young man showed his find to nearby neighbors who became concerned advising him to report the find to the police.

Thankfully, the advice was followed and the find was reported sparking off an emergency response and evacuation of the area. An EOD unit was called in for technical support to remove the ordnance for proper disposal (specific type not reported).

[More]

Cushing, Maine Two lobstermen got quite a shock when they discovered a military rocket stuck in their traps. Captain Cameron Pease and his stern man were aboard his boat, the Beverly E, when Pease found something tangled in his trawler's rope. That "something" turned out to be a 5-ft rocket, weighing about 150 pounds.

He did not immediately contact authorities, but instead kept it in his boat all day then loaded it onto his truck bed and brought it home. According to a Maine State Police social media post, Pease contacted a local warden the next day who then contacted the State Police Bomb Squad.

[More]

Round Lake Beach, Illinois Police were called to a Goodwill store after an employee found a hand grenade while going through donations at the store. The store was evacuated, and the Waukegan Bomb Squad was called in to x-ray the device for explosives.

According to police, the grenade had been hollowed out but plugged, so they were not sure if it was live initially. The bomb squad did deem it inert and safely removed the device. Police Chief Wayne Wilde urged anyone who needs to discard old munitions to contact police, not take them to Goodwill.

Southampton, England A civilian who discovered a munition while using his metal detector thought he could make a few bucks from the find by posting the item for sale on an on-line auction site. Luckily for everyone, a military collector recognized the device in the item as a live WWII era German incendiary bomb and promptly notified authorities. The British Army's bomb squad responded and evacuated the neighborhood around the man's home.

According to reports, the man listed the ordnance on the auction site with the price starting at 15 pounds (approximately $18). Military collector Ralf Sherwin saw the listing and sent the following message to the man - "Mate, do you realize that's not de-activated  it's live!". The military collector described what happened to reporters covering the story, "I went into great detail about that fact that you could see the iron oxide seeping out of the air holes and the join. In the nose there's a detonator, and once that dries out, it will go off, and I told him he wouldn't be able to put it out. After that, I expected him to take it down and call the police, but the idiot completely ignored me and carried on selling it. What was he going to do if someone bought it  cover it in bubble wrap and post it off in a Jiffy bag?"

[More]

North Port, Florida The North Port Police Department (NPPD) was called to a pawn shop after a customer brought in ordnance. Traffic jams ensued as Northbound traffic was rerouted in the area while U.S. Air Force EOD responded to inspect the projectile.

"The device found turned out to be a WWI anti-ship personnel round which had never been fired," police said. "An individual had attempted to sell the device at a nearby pawn shop who informed them that it could be dangerous. The individual then called NPPD."

[More]

Toulon, France No, your eyes are not deceiving you, there has been another report of a man being admitted to the hospital for a war relic lodged in his rectum. It seemed certain that our last report of such a strange incident would be an anomaly, but a French hospital was partially evacuated after an elderly man arrived with a WWI artillery shell in his "bottom."

The 88-year-old patient came into the Hospital Sainte Musse in Toulon to have the explosive removed, sparking a "bomb scare." In a statement a hospital spokesperson said, "An emergency occurred from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on Saturday evening that required the intervention of bomb disposal personnel, the evacuation of adult and pediatric emergencies as well as the diversion of incoming emergencies."

"We had to manage the risk in a reactive framework," the spokesperson said, "When in doubt, we took all the precautions."

Bomb disposal responded to the scene and determined there was little possibility the shell would explode inside the man. "They reassured us by telling us that it was a collector's item from the First World War, used by the French military," the hospital stated.

[More]

Asheville, North Carolina A Civil War-era artifact recently bought by an Asheville man turned out to be a live explosive. The Asheville Police Department (APD) Bomb Squad responded to a home in east Asheville after John Miller, who bought the 12-pound sphere item for three dollars from a scrap yard, grew suspicious of the device.

According to Miller, it rolled around in the back of his van for a few days before he decided to take a closer look. "I was getting a little nervous about it because I realized it wasn't a normal cannonball, as I assumed it was," he said.

Although the artifact appeared to be a cannonball, Joe Silberman, APD bomb squad commander said it actually was not. He explained, "It's a 4-and-2/3-inch bursting shell, or case shot. The way this would work, it was fitted with a fuse, it would be loaded into a piece of artillery, like a cannon, and it would be fired, and it would explode overhead on a battlefield," Silberman said. "If you harassed [it] enough or did certain things to it, like tried to drill into it or cut into it, it could have exploded."

[More]