About a year ago an expert Civil War collector was killed in Virginia.
He was trying to defuse some kind of ordnance, but I can’t recall what kind.
There weren’t that many things that blew up in the Civil War, were there?
A few mortars, a few artillery shells, mines maybe?
I remember that. There were a few FR threads about it.
Civil war artillery shells were actually fused bombs in many cases. Firing the cannon also lit the fuse which if timed right caused the round to explode on or near the target
Naturally there were many duds and the guy in Virginia tinkered with one