Happens multiple times a year it seems. Germany had a few million tons of bombs dropped on them in WW2, with a 15-20% failure rate. That's a whole lot of a uxo everwhere.

French, Belgian, and Dutch farmers still find unexploded artillery shells from WW1.

I used to blow shit up a bit in the Corps... not EOD, but lots of satchel charges and the usual C-4. Never understood how those EOD guys could do it.

Here's one of the guys in Germany who disarms them:

"..we had a long-delay detonator bomb in Mainz. We tried to disarm the ignition with a remote-controlled bomb disposal device since we had it on hand. That failed. So I had to actually go there and dismantle this extremely heavy device to see what the situation was. While dismantling it, there was a little noise, a kind of click. Once the thing was off, a device that had covered everything so you couldn't see the ignition, we dismantled the ignition, and it became clear that during the failed attempt, or else when I had tried to dismantle the device, it had been triggered. If everything had functioned properly, we wouldn't be talking to each other today."
https://www.dw.com/en/who-disarms-germanys-wwii-bombs/a-49452146

stumbled upon it and set it off. I had a relative who died while he and some other boys were playing around with an old bomb they found. Some people think that just because a bomb is old, it is a dud. Much of the time, that is not the case.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/03/second-world-war-bomb-leads-to-evacuations-and-school-closures-in-london-brondesbury-park

Army defuses second world war bomb found in London
This article is more than 2 years old

Bomb-disposal team worked through night to deal with device found in Brondesbury Park, which had prompted evacuations and school closures

Jamie Grierson
@JamieGrierson

Fri 3 Mar 2017 08.44 EST



A second world war bomb that forced schools and homes in London to be evacuated has been defused.

The device, weighing 500lb (227kg), was found by builders working on a development in Brondesbury Park, north-west London, late on Thursday morning, on The Avenue, near the junction of Willesden Lane.

The Metropolitan police, London fire brigade and an army bomb-disposal team were scrambled to the scene, where a cordon was erected and homes were evacuated.

The team worked through the night and police said on Friday evening the bomb had been defused and was being removed from the site.

Efforts to remove it had led to disruption on trains and bus services.


Nearly 30 schools, nurseries, and parent and toddler groups were also affected on Friday, including 10 school closures.

Brent council’s emergency planning team set up a rest centre at St Martin’s church in Kensal Green on Thursday. British Red Cross volunteers were drafted in to support affected locals.

Brent Council (@Brent_Council)

Here's a link to the list of roads that will be impacted by the extension of tomorrows cordon https://t.co/pqfmJbXD4B and a map of the area. pic.twitter.com/Z5IYRLoh7t
March 2, 2017

The leader of Brent council, Muhammed Butt, said 78 residents had spent Thursday night in a hotel, while the Met said bad weather had delayed the removal of the bomb.

Robin Mills, who lives in The Avenue, told the Kilburn Times: “From what I could see, [the device] was about six feet long and about a foot wide.” He described being evacuated for the first time as feeling “a bit strange”, saying: “I can imagine what people in the war times must have felt.”

In 2012, the Bomb Sight project attempted to map the incendiary devices that fell on London between 7 October 1940 and 6 June 1941. Created by Dr Catherine Jones of Portsmouth University and the National Archives, the map reveals the damage inflicted by German bombing raids during the blitz.

The contractor alerted the bomb squad and precautions were taken to keep residents near 39th and Foster streets safe from the 150-year-old artillery projectiles. But what are these balls made of, how did they get there and how dangerous are they?

Historians long have suspected the existence of cannonball caches beneath the old arsenal site at 40th and Butler streets, a location locals today know as Arsenal Middle School and the Rite Aid pharmacy.Established in 1814, Allegheny Arsenal produced cannonballs for Commodore Matthew Perry’s fleet battling the British on Lake Erie during the War of 1812. It became one of America’s principal ordnance innovators and manufacturers of ammunition for small arms and artillery in the years before the Civil War.

From 1861 to 1865, the sprawling complex of shops and laboratories on the banks of the Allegheny River turned out millions of rounds of musket ammunition and a wide range of shot for the horse-drawn field artillery needed by the Union armies to battle the Confederacy. So great was Pittsburgh’s wartime production that some historians refer to it as the “Arsenal of the Union.”

On Sept. 17,1862, 78 women and girls were killed, and many more wounded and maimed, in the worst industrial accident of the war. Leaking gunpowder barrels exploded near where girls were filling paper tubes with black powder (saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur) and lead bullets for muskets.

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