UK: Thought to be treasure, ‘fossil’ turns out a WWII grenade

A woman and her daughter luckily escaped as the item they thought to be a treasured ‘fossil’ turned out to be a World War 2 grenade that exploded in their kitchen in the UK.

Jodie Crews, 38, and her daughter Isabella, 8, found an interesting looking item during their recent trip to the beach and decided to bring it back to their home in Kent.

   

Intrigued by the rusty item, Crews posted photos of it on fossil and archaeology sites and had lots of replies.

Wasn’t going to put this on here but it’s a warning as well as a WTF!!Last wkend I picked something off the beach,…

Posted by Jodie Crews on Friday, 11 December 2020

Many had different suggestions and guesses and someone thought it looked like a whale vomit and to confirm it recommended a test. Soon, that test went wary and the World War II era grenade exploded, reported The Indian Express on Wednesday.

“Lots of different things but a hot pin test was recommended in case it was whale Vomit….. As you can see from bottom picture of kitchen damage it was not whale vomit… It was an eroded WW2 grenade, which when poked with the hot needle turned into a ball of fire!!!!” Crews wrote on Facebook in a post.

“Fireman told me, grenades have a wax around them and I had pushed the pin through that which instantly ignited it,” she added while sharing images of her kitchen walls covered in soot.

Crews who works with the Kent County Council said that she has been advised not to drink out of the taps as some of the chemicals from the grenade might have gone up them.

Talking about the object they brought back from the beach, she added: “It had strange ridges and looked more like a piece of bone. I thought it might be an old knee joint. It didn’t feel metallic at all.”

“My daughter screamed and ran out the back door. I grabbed the grenade and ran with it at arm’s length into the kitchen where I hurled it into the sink,” the woman told Yahoo UK. “We just went into survival mode. I then rushed upstairs to soak a towel to throw over it to put it out. The adrenaline must have kicked in and taken over,” she added.

Along with her daughter, luckily, the woman also managed to rescue all her pets in time and no one was injured in the accident. “My first thought was to save my daughter, house, cats and dogs. With my daughter safely in the garden I ran back upstairs to get the cats – we have four three-week-old kittens – and rounded up our two dogs.

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