From Germany we learn of the doorstop that wasn’t.
A police station in Bochum was evacuated after a woman brought in what she believed to be a land mine she had used as a doorstop for the last decade, authorities said on Wednesday. But the object turned out to be an antique bed warmer.
“There are events in the life of a policeman that bring beads of sweat to even the most experienced officer,” police said in a statement.
The 41-year-old woman hauled the 35-centimetre round metal object to the station in the boot of her car after a friend told her it looked like a land mine. She had found it in a forest and had been using it as a doorstop in her apartment since.
Police immediately cordoned off the area so that experts could test the rusty object. A specialist from Düsseldorf discovered that it was actually an old bed warmer probably used around 1900, police said.
But the woman declined to take the historic object back home with her.
“After all the excitement she will likely furnish her home with recognisable doorstops in the future,” the statement said.
Not a bad idea, I’d say . . .
I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall of the charge office when she walked in with that thing, announcing that she wondered if it might be an old land-mine. I imagine the police on duty would have had a rather interesting reaction!
Peter
This post reminds me of an incident that happened while I was at Ft. Bragg. The engineer unit I was with was given the mission of clearing some ground for a new soccer field. In the process, one of the dozers unearthed a couple of civil war vintage black powder shells which were hauled to the EOD office in the back of a pickup. The EOD guys well and truely freaked when 2 GI’s showed up at thier front door with the old munitions. The black powder was actually still viable in at least one of the shells, and could have been set off by the rough handling. EOD cordoned off the area until it was cleared, after which the soccer field was built. If I remember correctly, after that incident, the whole unit had a class on what to do (and not do) with found unexploded ordinance of whatever vintage. You can bet that NOT throwing it in the back of a pickup was at the top of the list!
There was a case in Massachusetts several years ago where a family was cleaning out the house of a recently deceased WWII vet grandfather and found two grenades. So, they put them in a paper bag, took them down to the police station, and dropped the bag on the counter. The desk sargeant looked in the bag, turned pale, and ordered the station and the surrounding area evacuated. The bomb squad safly took them away and detonated them.