Ka-boom!!

This is coolbert:

Read this extraordinary story: [thanks here to Jeff Rense!]

"Civil War Cannonball Kills Relic Collector"

A man, an experienced collector of American Civil War relics, blown sky-high and killed while restoring an artillery round, thought to be defused and inert, that could have only been last fired in 1865!

"Sam White, an avid collector of Civil War relics, was killed when a cannonball he was restoring exploded. The Chester, Va., man was an expert on Civil War munitions. 'Sam knew his stuff, no doubt about it,'"

Sam did know his stuff. But it was not good enough. THE ROUND, WHICH SAM THOUGHT WAS INERT, EVIDENTLY WAS DEFECTIVE AND STILL ACTIVE!!

"More than 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant, the cannonball was still powerful enough to send a chunk of shrapnel through the front porch of a house a quarter-mile from White's home in this leafy Richmond suburb."

". . . Explosives experts said the fatal blast defied extraordinary odds."

"Union and Confederate troops lobbed an estimated 1.5 million artillery shells and cannonballs at each other from 1861 to 1865. As many as one in five were duds."

"Experts suspect White was killed while trying to disarm a 9-inch, 75-pound naval cannonball, a particularly potent explosive with a more complex fuse and many times the destructive power of those used by infantry artillery."

"The weapon also had to be waterproof because it was designed to skip over the water at 600 mph to strike at the waterline of an enemy ship. The protection against moisture meant the ball could have remained potent longer than an infantry shell."

Skipping an artillery [cannon] round over the water [over the ground for that matter] was a common artillery practice during the era? The Light Brigade charging at Balaclava encountered Russian solid shot artillery rounds fired at them skip fashion too. Direct fire at a grazing angle to the ground [or the water if naval cannon fire]!

Mr. White, experienced in these matters, probably an authority as defined, was dealing with a defective round that defied safe restoration!!

coolbert.