There’s an old saying, “Better safe than sorry,” and that was certainly the case in this story. It was an 81-year old man that made the discovery in his backyard in Karlsruhe, Germany, after finding an object that was 15.7 inches in length, dark in color, and, according to police, “really did look like a bomb.” On closer inspection, however, the Unexploded Bomb turned out to be a large vegetable – in fact, a large Zucchini – which, reportedly, someone must have thrown over his hedge.

Unexploded World War II bomb turns out to be a zucchini

As reported by The Local, once police closely inspected the “bomb,” it was clearly a zucchini which they believe an unknown person, who wanted to “independently dispose of the product,” must have thrown over the hedge surrounding the man’s yard.

While it was just a large vegetable sitting in his backyard, the man’s concern is understandable. Even though World War Ii has been over for some 70 years, Germans are regularly uncovering unexploded bombs and other munitions from the war, often leading to mass evacuations, while bomb experts safely dispose of them. Britain and its allies launched numerous bombing campaigns on Germany during World War II and the results will probably continue be found for years to come.

Recent evacuations in Germany over unexploded bombs

In March this year, a five-ton British bomb was discovered on a construction site in Dusseldorf, leading to 8,000 residents being evacuated.

More recently, in August, a further evacuation saw tens of thousands of resident evacuated from the city of Frankfurt. Authorities believed the bomb could potentially affect some 70,000 people when they found the 4,000 lb British “blockbuster” bomb, which was defused safely. At the same time, the city of Koblenz saw approximately 20,000 people evacuated while bomb experts defused a smaller, but still deadly, half-ton U.S.

bomb.

As noted by Newsweek, other countries in Europe have had similar experiences, with unexploded World War II bombs discovered in England and Greece. That report also mentioned an older, equally scary find in Massachusetts, when live artillery shells from the Civil War were found by a librarian in her closet at work.

According to reports in the German media, people shouldn’t blame the 81-year-old man for paranoia, as it really did look like an unexploded bomb.

Even though he was a child during World War II, he no doubt has memories of exploding bombs from back then. While it is unknown who threw the zucchini into the man’s garden, authorities ended up leaving it to the elderly man to dispose of the vegetable himself. Whether it ended up in a pot for dinner is unknown.
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