10.
Playing with an Unexploded Bomb David and Karen Hibbert were having a picnic
at Thoresby Park in Nottinghamshire with their two kids, 9-year-old Bethany and 6-year-old
Jessica.
It was just a normal day, until David unexpectedly stumbled upon a mysterious and unidentified
object next to the river.
He quickly became convinced it was a bomb from World War Two that had been lost for
over 70 years.
But Karen dismissed his discovery as nonsense, saying all he found was a dumb old kid’s
toy that had been abandoned at the park.
While Karen may have been right about most things, she got this one dead wrong.
She would come to seriously regret calling her husband a drama queen and convincing him
that the unidentified object wasn't dangerous.
After she told him to put it back where he found it, the pair continued their picnic
with the object just a few feet from them and their children.
Later on, Karen would be left mortified when it turned out her husband really had found
a bomb from World War Two!
A couple days later she saw a post on their local park's Facebook page.
The post talked about a controlled explosion that had taken place exactly where they had
been picnicking.
When she looked at pictures, she realized it was the very bomb that her husband had
discovered and left in the park!
Someone else had found it and then it was blown up by the Nottinghamshire Police!
It just goes to show that pretty much anywhere you go in Europe, even if you're just having
a picnic with your family, you could be sitting next to an exploded piece of ammunition from
the Second World War.
9.
Rare MK1 Spitfire On May 26, 1940, Squadron Leader Geoffrey
Stephenson with the Royal Air Force crashed his plane on a French beach as part of Operation
Dynamo.
Following the ridiculously rapid advance of German troops at the end of May 1940, Allied
troops were pushed up against the coast of the English Channel.
They were stranded on the beach at the French port of Dunkirk, desperately in need of evacuation.
The Royal Navy collected as many ships as they could to bring their soldiers home, while
the Royal Air Force sent all available aircraft to help protect the evacuating soldiers.
Geoffrey Stephenson was piloting his MK1 Spitfire, what would be its first and only mission.
He led his squadron on a patrol over the evacuation of the Allied forces, shot down a few Junkers
Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers, and then was shot down himself.
He crashed at a beach near Calais and was captured by the enemy.
He remained a prisoner of the Nazis for the rest of the war, while his beloved plane sank
underneath the sandy beach.
Geoffrey was set free after the war.
He then continued his career as a pilot until he died in 1954 in the United States test
flying aircrafts.
Finally in 1986, strong currents revealed Geoffrey’s lost spitfire from the French
beach.
It had been stuck there for over 45 years.
The Royal Air Force was so excited to find the bones of an MK1 Spitfire that they quickly
excavated all of it, put it back together, and brought the air machine back to its former
glory.
8.
Lost Relics An archaeological dig in Sicily has revealed
traces of an American heavy bomber plane that was shot down in 1943.
The dig also revealed possible human remains that could lead to finally identifying five
airmen whose bodies were never found after the crash.
The excavation went on for about six weeks.
It was done by a team with the Pentagon Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, a group responsible
for locating and identifying all missing military personnel across the world.
That includes missing prisoners and lost pilots from World War Two.
What they discovered was wreckage consistent with a B-25 aircraft.
They believe it was a B-25 Mitchell heavy bomber, crewed by six.
It could have been one of the dozens of destroyed planes that was shot down in 1943 when the
Allies pushed their way into southeastern Sicily.
Back then, when a plane went down, the crew was often lost.
In this case, if it’s the plane the experts believe it to be, only one of the six crew
members was found – and that was back in 1943.
The body was claimed in 1944 by the US Military, but the other five airmen are still missing.
It's been a long time since the plane went down, but the archaeologists were able to
identify some scraps of human bone.
They’re still waiting to do DNA testing to figure out just who the bones belong to.
7.
Grenades in the Backyard A man in the United Kingdom discovered live
grenades from World War Two in someone’s backyard!
The grenades were so unexpected that he didn't even think they were bombs at first.
He thought they looked like milk bottles!
According to the Smithsonian Magazine, as many as 10% of the bombs dropped between 1940
and 1945 never exploded.
And because so many bombs were dropped in the UK, there are still lots of small, unexploded
pieces of ordnance scattered throughout the country.
These grenades were found by a gardener working at a piece of property in Hampshire.
He dug them out of the ground like they were a pair of explosive turnips.
A little unnerved, James Osborne quickly got ahold of the right authorities to figure out
what to do about the bombs.
He didn't realize how significant they were.
He was lifting them up, looking at them, and throwing them back onto the ground like it
was no big deal!
Yikes!
That could have been really bad!
James uncovered over 40 grenades in this one residential zone.
Nobody knows how they got there.
They could have been left behind by military men, they could have been part of someone's
private collection that they buried beneath their yard and forgot about.
It's just impossible to say.
In the end, a military bomb disposal team arrived to take care of the situation.
They carried out a controlled explosion on 45 phosphorus grenades.
What would you do if you found some grenades in your backyard?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and don't forget to hit subscribe while you’re
at it!
We have lots more videos about amazing discoveries coming soon!
6.
Sunken Ships Scientists with the University of Hawaii have
discovered a ghost ship sitting on the seabed off the coast of Oahu.
Interestingly enough, it's sitting right beside the wreckage of a pair of Japanese submarines.
The ghost ship is roughly 1800 feet (549m) beneath the surface of the ocean and 20 miles
(32km) from the island of Oahu.
It's been sitting there for at least 60 years, perfectly upright with its mast still erect.
It honestly looks like it’s about to go sailing across the bottom of the ocean.
Its upper deck is intact and it hasn’t really decayed that much.
It almost appears brand new.
That is, except for the fact that it was blown up by a torpedo in 1946.
Before it was a house for fish, this ghost ship was the USS Kailua.
Before that, it was the Dickenson, a vessel used to lay submarine cables.
It became useless after the war and was taken by the Navy for target practice.
They sank it themselves and then simply forgot about it.
In fact, everyone forgot about it until the university researchers went down and photographed
the ship, shocked to see it in such immaculate shape even though it was torpedoed.
5.
The Goddard Rocket Launching Site If you're ever visiting the small town of
Auburn, Massachusetts, you may discover a small marble obelisk in the middle of a seemingly
ordinary park.
This obelisk is in commemoration of the world's first liquid fuel rocket launch.
It marks the exact location where on March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard fired a rocket
propelled by liquid fuel instead of gunpowder in a world first.
The launch was a huge success, pushing the rocket to an altitude of 41 feet (12m).
It then landed about 184 feet (56m) from its launching frame.
Yes, this was before World War Two.
But the success Robert had with his rocket in 1926 was a revolution in innovation.
This seemingly innocent rocket was the foundation for the legendary V-2 missile used by Germany
in the Great War.
It was like the first man to put an arrow between a stick and a piece of string and
then fire it!
The same method of technology was even used in the Saturn V rocket during the Apollo 11
mission to the moon.
Today, you can see the birthplace of the deadly rocket at the Goddard Rocket Launching Site
in Auburn.
Just look for the pointy obelisk in the middle of the park!
4.
Belarusian Mass Grave In the small Belarusian village of Logoza,
a mass grave from the days of World War Two has been uncovered.
The grave is about 15 feet (4.5m) deep and packed full of human skeletons and broken
bone fragments.
The pit was discovered filled with pieces of ammunition, discarded personal objects,
dozens of shoes, a single broken comb, and decapitated skulls with bullets inside them.
It was absolutely horrific, one of the most terrible World War Two discoveries in recent
memory.
According to the State Forensic Examination Committee of Belarus, an investigation team
is still working to identify the bodies.
The experts believe those buried in this mass grave were victims of mass shootings during
World War Two when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941.
On their way through, the Nazis indiscriminately shot women, children, and the elderly.
They then dumped their bodies in unmarked mass graves.
Before this one was found, there was another mass grave discovered near the city of Brest,
where a Jewish ghetto was erected during the Holocaust.
Here, researchers discovered 1214 bodies.
In total, it's been estimated that the Nazis executed between 1.6 and 3 million civilians
in Belarus alone, with between 500,000 and 800,000 of them being Jews.
3.
Canadian Tank A Canadian war machine from the Second World
War has been dug up from somewhere you wouldn’t expect.
The vehicle is a Canadian Covenanter, a heavy tank used during the war, and it was recovered
from the Denbies Vineyard in Surrey, England.
It had originally been buried there at the end of the war alongside one other military
tank.
Andrew Wright, manager for the National Trust, said the excavation was quite the sight to
behold.
He was especially excited when the digger made contact with the tank and he could hear
the metallic sounds of metal scraping against metal.
But the biggest question is just how did the tank end up in a vineyard?
According to information from the Ranmore War Memorial, this tank and the other one
buried next to it had been used for training by the Canadian army between 1940 and 1944.
By 1943, the tanks had been so severely damaged that they weren't considered usable.
Both of them were abandoned when the Canadians left England in 1944.
They were subsequently buried, and then the first one was recovered and dug up in the
1970s.
2.
World War II Minesweeper A shipwreck in the middle of the Irish Sea,
a vessel previously believed to be a submarine, has just been identified as a minesweeper
from World War Two.
It was called the HMS Mercury, originally built as a ferry.
It was requisitioned by the Admiralty in 1939 to be used as a minesweeper in the war.
Sadly for the HMS Mercury, it wasn’t in service for very long.
In 1940, it was damaged by a mine that it was trying to clear off the coast of southern
Ireland and then it sank.
The mine got snagged in its sweeping gear, drawn right up against the hull of the ship,
and then blew up under the stern!
It took about two hours for the boat to sink, thankfully there were no fatalities.
The crew was rescued by another vessel at about 8:30 in the evening.
These days, there are about 300 shipwrecks in the Irish Sea.
They span from between World War One and World War Two, making it difficult to separate one
ship from another using nothing but radar.
But the Bangor University research team is almost certain this is the legendary HMS Mercury,
the minesweeper that blew itself up.
1.
Soldiers Left Behind In 1940 in North Africa, the Long Range Desert
Group was formed.
This was a group of cutthroat soldiers from New Zealand who fought tooth and nail against
the Nazis.
Recently, some skeletal remains of soldiers from World War 2 were discovered in Poland,
and experts say they could be the remains of members of the elite Long Range Desert
Group!
They may have had New Zealand prisoners of war captured by the Germans and never released
from Poland.
An international investigation is currently underway to help identify the remains of the
soldiers and uncover any surviving family members.
The remains of two dead soldiers were found in the small Polish village of Wierzbowa by
the Institute of National Remembrance.
The institute suspects the Long Range Desert Group since they carried out clandestine operations
here, behind enemy lines back in the 1940s.
They launched raids, gathered intelligence on the Germans and the Italians, and sabotaged
the enemy whenever they could.
But you can't just go running around in enemy territory without occasionally being captured.
Even though the group was notorious for their toughness, some of them were captured and
taken to POW camps.
All of this is just a theory right now until DNA evidence can prove otherwise.
If true, it will be remarkable for one main reason.
Even though remains of soldiers from World War One and World War Two are found on a fairly
regular basis even today, it's extremely less common to find soldiers from New Zealand.
Especially as far away as Poland.
Thanks for watching!
What’s your favorite old piece of machinery discovered from World War 2?
Let me know about it in the comments below and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button!
Come back soon for more videos and I’ll see you then!