Well, WW I is finally over

[dudalb]

Interestingly enough, the last guy to die from a shot fired in WW1 did so in 2004. A collector in Italy was dusting his shelves when a spent shell detonated, killing him.

If memory serves, a number of people have been killed by unexploded ordance still in the ground from both world wars when it was disturbed in some way. Aging ordance is very dangerous;very unstable.

 

[Beerina]

There were a handful of people on the continental US who died from direct action in WWII, namely, Japanese balloon-delivered firebombs, intended to turn the forests of the west into an inferno. One such case was in 1954 or something, when a guy stumbled on one.


Anyway, the picture in question looks like French guys (I assume) running over the no man's land when a bomb or mortar explodes. They wouldn't be running towards it, and clearly aren't (yet) running away.

I tineye'd it, and it is used on the cover of this book, but I couldn't find the context of the picture. Maybe the direction they're running is actually "away" from the battle, when a mortar shoots over their heads and lands in front of them, i.e. further away from the front line.

 

[Soapy Sam]

"Hans! Take down the photograph of the Kaiser."

 

[Cleon]

If memory serves, a number of people have been killed by unexploded ordance still in the ground from both world wars when it was disturbed in some way. Aging ordance is very dangerous;very unstable.

Here in Georgia, periodically unexploded Civil War ordinance is discovered and detonated. In 2008, a collector in Virginia was killed when a cannonball he was restoring exploded.

 

[BenBurch]

Our children's children's children will still be paying for The Cold War.

 

[ktesibios]

If memory serves, a number of people have been killed by unexploded ordance still in the ground from both world wars when it was disturbed in some way. Aging ordance is very dangerous;very unstable.

Unexploded artillery shells are still turning up regularly in the area of the Ypres Salient. It's been estimated that as many as 25% of all the shells fired failed to detonate on impact, and about 1 in 5 of the UXO found turns out to be chemical shells filled with such nasties as phosgene and sulfur mustard.The Belgian government found it necessary to build a plant to destroy the recovered shells, at a cost of some ten million Euros.

Because so many shells are found by farmers plowing their lands, they have acquired the nickname "Iron harvest". There are also sites in the Channel where mass quantities of unused shells, many of them chemical weapons, were disposed of after the war by dumping. One such dump, estimated to contain as much as 500,000 liters of mustard gas, lies only a few hundred meters off a popular Dutch beach resort.

World War I finally over? Oh, tell me another one.

 

[Beanbag]

Well, the American Civil War ended a few years back, with the passing of the last Confederate veteran's widow in Alabama. Apparently, the state was still paying her benefits. I wonder if they had an entire department just for her, or whether some secretary made out a check each month and mailed it off to her.

http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=1907163

Beanbag

 

[Rat]

Here in Georgia, periodically unexploded Civil War ordinance is discovered and detonated.

I imagine it's ordnance, unless this is some US/UK thing I'm not aware of. Ordinances rarely explode in such a way that people are killed, or at least only metaphorically.