9. WWI MUNITIONS
Le Mort Homme, or “Dead Man’s Hill,” is the site of a bloody WWI battle that was
fought between the Germans and theFrench in late February 1916. It marked the beginning
of the months-long Battle of Verdun, which lasted into December of that year.
After this initial battle at Mort Homme, the Germans dumped copious
amounts of unexploded munitions into the River Meuse. Many of them ended
up buried in the riverbed as the water’s path gradually changed over the years.
In 2018, as the anniversary of the war’s end approached, bomb disposal experts were
still digging up munitions at the battle site and elsewhere throughout eastern France where fighting
occurred. The recovery process is painstaking, requiring scuba divers to enter the icy river,
tie ropes around dozens of shells, and then remove them with a crane.
The Metz Demining Centre told Reuters that it removes between 50 and 55
tons (45-50 metric tons), that’s about thirty times as heavy as a car, of ordnance every year,
and estimated that there was still another 275 to 330 tons (250-300 metric tons), which is about
four times as heavy as The Space Shuttle, waiting to be removed from the surrounding landscape.
The good news is that these munitions are at little risk of exploding, and the remote “Zone
Rouge,” or “Red Zone,” sees few visitors. Authorities don’t want to take their chances
of someone getting hurt, especially because some people have taken it upon themselves to dig up the
bombs and have gotten seriously injured or killed. So they continue to work diligently to eventually
make the area 100 percent explosive-free. 8. AGENT ORANGE
Agent Orange was a toxic herbicide that contained the deadly chemical dioxin. In
a program codenamed Operation Ranch Hand, it was used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War
to destroy crops and forest cover in Viet Cong territory. The chemical was also used
in areas that were occupied by the North Vietnamese Army. Between 1961 and 1971,
four-and-a-half million acres, that’s just a little smaller than New Jersey, across Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos were doused with over 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other
toxic chemicals. That would be about the same as filling your gas tank up a million times!
Agent Orange was, by far, the most heavily used substance throughout the program, with at least
13 million gallons being used during Operation Ranch Hand. That’s about the same as filling your
bathtub up 4 million times. It caused serious health issues for those who were exposed to it,
including civilians and U.S. service members. People suffered from rashes, severe psychological
and neurological issues, birth defects, liver problems, and cancer. It’s also linked to type
II diabetes, nerve disorders, heart disease, and immune system dysfunction, to name just a few.
For those who live in countries that were sprayed with Agent Orange, these health issues have
continued into modern times. The chemical, which is dangerous even in small amounts,
made its way onto roadways and established a lasting presence in soil and water.
It still causes major health issues for people who weren’t even alive during the Vietnam War,
and this is clear in the high level of birth defects among children born in the affected areas.
Vietnam and the U.S. have gone back and forth for decades trying to reach a reasonable agreement
regarding the American government’s financial obligations toward healthcare and the massive
clean-ups for ridding the environment of the chemical. This clean-up is predicted to come
at a price tag of around $300,000,000. The U.S. government finally started assisting
in post-war clean-up efforts in 2012. 7. A JAPANESE BOMB IN AN AMERICAN YARD
While recently gardening in her backyard, Missouri resident Pamela Lovett noticed a rusty,
mud-covered object in the ground. She took it inside and her husband, Sam Coffey,
washed it off and began scraping away at it with a knife to find out what it was.
Lovett noticed Japanese lettering on the item and shouted at Coffey
to stop what he was doing, because he might have a bomb in his hands.
Using Google Lens, the couple determined it was probably a bomb.
What started out as an ordinary afternoon turned chaotic when the pair called the
local sheriff’s office, who arrived along with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Air Force, Coffey told NBC News. Authorities made
Lovett and Coffey wait outside the home while they set up a perimeter and investigated.
Experts determined the bomb was still live and had a 500-foot (152.4 meters) blast
range. That’s a distance almost as tall as the Washington Monument. Thankfully,
the St. Louis Regional Bomb and Arson Unit removed the explosive without incident while
reminding Lovett and Coffey how lucky they were that they didn’t get hurt or killed.
The couple posted the shocking news on social media, and it went viral. Meanwhile,
the bomb was detonated in a controlled explosion at an Air Force base.
Nobody knows how the foreign bomb ended up in someone’s yard in America,
and it’s possible, that we’ll never know. 6. LEFTOVER UNEXPLODED VIETNAM-ERA ORDNANCE
Between 1964 and 1973, U.S. forces secretly conducted hundreds of thousands of bombing
missions over Laos, dropping the equivalent of a plane-load of bombs on the country every eight
minutes on average. These campaigns were carried out to stop traffic along the Ho Chi Minh trail,
a key North Vietnamese supply route, and to support the royal government in its efforts
against the communist movement known as the Pathet Lao. Hundreds of thousands
of civilians were displaced as their villages were destroyed.
One-third of the bombs that were dropped over Laos did not explode, leaving people
at constant risk of coming into contact with deadly unexploded ordnance. Since the bombing
stopped, over 20,000 Lao citizens have died in instances like these. A lot of property owners,
including many farmers, are aware that there are dangerous explosives buried on their land,
but they can’t afford the clean-up, so they’re left with no choice but to take
their chances and till the land for the sake of making a living.
Clean-up efforts have been ongoing for many years now. The U.S. contributes roughly $4,900,000 per
year to the clean-up, which is a lot less than the country spent raining bombs over Laos for
nine years straight. As of 2008, the number of annual casualties stood at around 310. Today,
that number has been reduced to 50, but it’s still a problem, especially
since about 60 percent of accidents result in death and around 40 percent involve children.
As of September 1, 2021, the 300,000th unexploded bomb was removed from the ground
and safely disposed of. It marked a long-overdue milestone in the efforts to make the country safe,
but there’s still a long way to go before the Lao people can live without fear of
being injured or killed by one of the many bombs that remain on their land.
Do you think the US should pay for the entire clean-up, or should Vietnam’s government pay
for part of it? Share your thoughts in the comments, and be sure to hit the subscribe
button before the end of the video. 5. WWII BOMBS IN GERMANY
Out of the 2.7 million tons of bombs that the U.S. and Britain dropped on Europe between 1940
and 1945, half fell on Germany. That’s more weight than a million elephants. The country’s
landscape was crippled, closely resembling a moonscape or anything else of this world.
After the war, reconstruction began almost immediately, even though roughly 10 percent
of the bombs dropped on Germany never exploded. Both East and West Germany
were rebuilt atop tens of thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance. Police bomb-disposal
technicians on both sides were tasked with taking care of the hazardous materials.
But they didn’t get everything. As recently as 2016, at least
2,000 tons of undetonated bombs were being found in Germany every year. That’s about
thirty times as heavy as the Space Shuttle. The government takes plenty of precautions, including
requiring a thorough inspection of a parcel of land before any sort of construction begins.
Despite that, some bombs go undetected. In 2015 20,000 people were evacuated from Dortmund after
a bomb was discovered mid-construction. Just a few years earlier in 2011,
45,000 people were evacuated when a similar device
was exposed during a drought. It was the largest evacuation in Germany since WWII.
Since the year 2000, 11 bomb technicians have died, despite the country being at
peace for over three generations. Speaking with Smithsonian Magazine,
bomb technician Horst Reinhardt said that he never expected to be doing his job for
upwards of 30 years. He also mentioned that the city of Oranienburg is Germany’s
most dangerous city, experiencing almost daily bomb-related issues.
It appears as though the leftover munitions from one of history’s darkest chapters may continue to
haunt the country for years to come. 4. TRAGEDIES IN THE CONGO
In 2001 a man and a 10-year-old child were killed when a blacksmith in Brazzaville mistook
a bomb for ordinary metal and threw it into his furnace. The entire shop blew up, claiming the
lives of both the blacksmith and the boy who was helping him, and seriously injuring a woman who
was passing by when the explosion occurred. A year earlier, 11 kids died while playing with a
shell they found on their school playground, with no understanding of how dangerous the object was.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is Africa’s second-largest country.
It’s known for its abundance of natural resources, including oil,
gold, diamonds, and other materials. Yet nearly two-thirds of its people live in dire poverty,
surviving on less than $2.00 a day. And these conditions, along with ethnic tensions and other
dividing factors, create the perfect recipe for conflict. For decades, the country has
been plagued by armed fighting, political instability, and human rights violations.
Two wars were fought in the Congo from 1996 to 2003, including a brutal war between 25 armed
groups from 9 different countries. Since then, there have been many tragedies throughout the
country involving the accidental detonation of unexploded bombs left behind from the conflict.
Sadly, the hostilities in the Congo continue to this day. War could break out at any time,
as tensions remain high and occasionally erupt into turmoil. And the risks of
someone unintentionally setting off a bomb remain ever-present.
3. GUNS, KNIVES, & EXPLOSIVES IN UK WATERWAYS As magnet fishing becomes increasingly popular
throughout the U.K., people are recovering concerning amounts of guns, explosives,
and knives from British waterways. And many of these weapons date back to World War II.
Vice journalist Davey Brett recently joined William Nixon, who runs the YouTube channel
Leeds Magneters, and his 7- and 5-year-old sons on a magnet fishing day trip in Manchester.
Nixon has retrieved at least two WWII knives, one British and one German,
as well as an artillery shell, a grenade, and many guns, including WWII-era machine guns.
Nixon’s experience isn’t unique, magnet fisher Phil Styles told
Brett that in just three-and-a-half years of participating in the hobby,
he’s recovered over 80 knives, 40 guns, and two hand grenades.
And pulling a gun out of the water is dangerous, no matter how long it’s been in there,
as Nixon learned after finding one and calling the police to the scene. The
gun misfired as the cop deactivated it, and thankfully, nobody was hurt.
While the U.K.’s laws technically ban magnet fishers from removing items from canals,
it’s only loosely enforced. Anyone who finds a dangerous item, like a gun, is expected to call
the police and have them handle it. 2. A BOMB BENEATH BELGRADE
In late 2013, a pair of construction workers in downtown Belgrade found an unexploded WWII era
bomb 20 feet (6 meters) below ground, that’s about as deep as a giraffe is tall, where it
had sat beneath the city streets for around 70 years. The one-ton weapon was manufactured in
Germany and contained over 1,360 pounds (620kg) of explosives. That’s about how much a cow weighs.
To ensure residents’ safety, locals were evacuated from the area while the bomb
was excavated and transported 44 miles (70 km) away to a military base. That’s
almost as far as the Panama Canal is long, where it was slated to be safely destroyed.
On March 27, 1941, the Yugoslav regime was overthrown in a coup d'état that had
British support. King Peter II was stated to be of age, even though he was just 17.
The newly formed Yugoslav government, under Prime Minister and General Dušan Simović,
declined to ratify Yugoslavia's signing of the Tripartite Pact and started talks with
the UK and the Soviet Union. The day after the signing of the pact, protestors assembled on
the streets of Belgrade and shouted, "Better the grave than a slave, better a war than the pact."
This enraged Hitler and he issued Directive 25 as an answer to the coup and attacked
Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6. The German Air Force bombarded Belgrade for three days
and nights. German ground troops marched in, and Yugoslavia surrendered on April 17.
The Yugoslav government and military were woefully unprepared and under-equipped,
posing no match against the hundreds of aircraft laying siege to their city, resulting in heavy
civilian casualties and the destruction of Belgrade’s infrastructure, including the
National Library of Serbia and the Belgrade Zoo. On 6 April 2016, the 75th anniversary of the
bombing, a memorial service was held for the victims, attended by the Serbian Minister for
Labour Aleksandar Vulin. In June 2017, the government announced that the site of the
crumbled foundations of the National Library of Serbia would be made into a memorial garden.
1. MUNITIONS IN MANIPUR Late last year, Lalsangmuon
Gangte and his brother Lenkhogin were digging a pit behind their courtyard in the town of Moreh
when one of them unknowingly hit a bomb with their spade, causing it to explode and kill them both.
During WWII’s later stages, the conflict between the Allied and the Axis powers found its way to
the state of Manipur in northeastern India, along the border with Myanmar. It was here
that U.S. forces came head-to-head with the Japanese as they invaded the country.
When the fighting ended, the Allies buried unexploded bombs,
perhaps thinking that people would be safe from them if they were kept below ground. But
the consequences have been catastrophic for the region’s residents ever since.
Rajeshwor Yumnam, who heads the Imphal Campaign Foundation, told the Deccan Herald that there’s
an ongoing issue with WWII bombs in the area hurting and killing people. He said that 15
or 20 years ago, an explosion killed several kids. It wasn’t covered heavily in the media,
leaving one to wonder just how often things like this happen and go unreported.
Nicknamed the “Forgotten Front,” India played a complicated and important role in the war,
one that seems to be largely overlooked today. So it comes as a surprise to many
that there are so many unexploded bombs littering the subcontinent,
especially in the jungle. But perhaps it wouldn’t be so shocking if it were
customary to teach a more thorough version of history to schoolchildren.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather go magnet fishing or use
a metal detector to look for valuable items? Let us know in
the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe! See you next time, bye! :)