Posted on 12/05/2023 8:13:57 AM PST by Red Badger
A Ministry of Defense bomb disposal team safely detonated a 19th century bomb that spent more than 100 years as a garden decoration at a home in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Photo courtesy of Milford Haven and Neyland Police/Facebook
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A bomb squad was called to a home in Wales when a decoration that had adorned the garden for over a century was identified as a 19th century military bomb.
Jeffrey Edwards, 77, who has lived at the house in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, for 41 years, said the previous owners of the house, the Morris family, told him the object had been in the yard for decades.
"Well, Pop Morris, who went around delivering lemonade, was going down to Broad Haven with his horse and cart and found the shell," Edwards told the BBC. "He struggled back up the beach with it, put it on the back of his cart and had a very bouncy 7-mile ride back home. He plonked it upright in the front courtyard and that's where it remained."
The object was long thought to be an inert military missile from the 19th century, but a police officer told Edwards and his wife, Sian, last week that the Ministry of Defense needed to inspect the bomb.
A bomb squad visited the home and determined the bomb was live, but had a very small charge. It was taken to an old quarry and detonated.
"It was an old friend. I'm so sorry that the poor old thing was blown to pieces," Edwards said.
Edwards said officials told him the missile came from a British warship and dates from between 1880 and 1890.
The Ministry of Defense confirmed the 64-pound "naval projectile" was destroyed by specialists.
The bomb had sat in the Edwards’ garden before it was taken away and destroyed. Photograph: Wales news service/Wales News Service
why isn’t this article a “BOMBSHELL!!!”
My grandmother had this post-modern sculpture in her garden. I thought it was more attractive than garden gnomes.
How about a lawn jockey?
The headline is wrong. It wasn’t a missile. Stupid journalist.
That’s an artillery shell, not a bomb. It looks to be defused.
British English................
A local city park here had a Bo-mark missile on display for decades and decades.
They had to remove it when they found out it was radioactive!................
From the article:
A bomb squad visited the home and determined the bomb was live, but had a very small charge. It was taken to an old quarry and detonated. "It was an old friend. I'm so sorry that the poor old thing was blown to pieces," Edwards said. Edwards said officials told him the missile came from a British warship and dates from between 1880 and 1890. The Ministry of Defense confirmed the 64-pound "naval projectile" was destroyed by specialists.
A hand-thrown rock can be referred to as a "missile", so the headline was correct. That usage of the word is a bit of an anachronism these days, of course... though perhaps less so in the U.K.
The Bomarc flying missile was an early one. Looked more like a German V-1 than a ‘missile.’ It was one of the first military models I put together as a boy in the early 60s. They actually had them operationally on Okinawa when I was there as a dependent in the late 50s/early 60s.
In military terminology a missile is something self-propelled. In civilian speak, words mean whatever you want them to anymore.
I’ll bet that kept the frost off the pumpkins!
The original definition of a missile predates our self-propelled versions by quite a bit. A missile is an object (such as a weapon) thrown or projected usually so as to strike something at a distance. A bullet, artillery shell, mortar shell, rocket, a rock, and an arrow are all, by definition, missiles when they're propelled by force. From Latin, but in English, the use of the word missile as a noun dates back to the early 1600s.
There was a NIKE base next door to my high school in Southern California. It closed down in the early 1960s. When we were kids we’d catch frogs and fly kites in the adjacent fields.
BoMARC ... a pormanteau of Boeing and Michigan Aeronautical Research Center. It was armed with a nuclear explosive; the idea was to destroy a whole formation of Soviet bombers with one big boom while they were still very far away.
I bet it wasn't radioactive enough to actually be dangerous.
No it wasn’t, but any radiation that’s detectable is of concern to the public, so it was removed.
We still have a Civil War cannon and I suspect it will be gone eventually..........................
The Civil War cannon is radioactive as well ... dem damyankees was usin’ newkular artillery shells!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.