Kids Find Civil War Cannonball

[David Lockmiller]

Washington Post
March 12, 2021

A small group of children found a Civil War-era cannonball in southeastern Virginia on Wednesday that might contain explosive black powder, authorities said.

Officers from the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office responded Wednesday to the Seaford area of York County after children with a metal detector found a round metal object about two feet underground, the department said in a statement. The children brought the object inside, and parents called 911.

Officials from Naval Weapons Station Yorktown identified the object as a Union cannonball dating to the “late Civil War” that possibly contained explosive black powder, the sheriff’s office said. The cannonball will be disposed of by an explosion.

Aviel Thompson, 10, was one of the cannonball’s four discoverers.

“Basically, we were just digging to have fun and we used the metal detector,” he said Friday. “There was a loud beep. … We poked something metal and took a chunk off of it. Luckily it didn’t spark.”

[LincolnMan]

Wow. That could have been fatal. Who would have thought. Glad the story ended well. And history was gleaned as a result.