Which is more disturbing.......

[Chatterton]

Okay, I am struggling with this one. I am not sure which is more disturbing, a criminal mastermind wreck diver who believes it is okay to loot protected shipwrecks and then gets caught by the the TSA.......... or a genius who thinks it is okay to put old ordinance in his checked luggage and then get on the plane???? Either way, I am sure the people who were evacuated now think very highly of divers.

February 9, South Florida Sun-Sentinel – (Florida) TSA finds old cannonball in bag at Fort Lauderdale airport. An 18th Century, coral-crusted cannonball was discovered February 2 in a checked bag at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Broward County, Florida, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported February 9. The Transportation Security Administration said the passenger was a diver who had no malicious intent. The cannonball was pulled from an old ship wreck and still held some potential to explode. The old cannonball triggered an evacuation of a baggage area and three flights, affecting 290 passengers, were delayed.

 

[beaverdivers]

Both, got any Spanish coins to toss up to decide.

 

[Gilldiver]

John, and you never saw 3" shells pulled out of the San Diego and get the war hear hammered off on the back of the boat - all the while smelling the ether from the cordite off gassing ...........

 

[Ste Wart]

I'm impressed he managed to stay within his baggage weight limit.

 

[The Chairman]

Did they figure out which wreck it came off of?

But yeah, people simply don't respect antique ordnance. I am reminded of the "last casualty" of the civil war. This guy blew himself up while polishing an explosive round. Most people think that they can get away with mostly because they haven't thought everything through first.

 

[Wookie]

I'd bet it came from Biscayne National Park. You know the place, the one marked on the charts that says "don't go here". Kind of like placing a bar zone in a foreign country off limits and telling the sailors "don't go here".

 

[Capt Scotty]

lol....As I watched this on the news the other morning it brought back memories of the destruction of a friends garage who was a legal treasure hunter. He had a cannon ball explode and wipe out a rack of shelving and made one heck of a mess of some other stuff...

 

[ianr33]

How does a cannon ball explode? It's just a lump of metal.Or am I missing something?

Round shot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

. or a genius who thinks it is okay to put old ordinance in his checked luggage and then get on the plane?

What's wrong with putting old local laws on a plane?

 

[Wookie]

How does a cannon ball explode? It's just a lump of metal.Or am I missing something?

It's only low pressure steel cannonballs that explode when somebody plugs off the burst disc port...

 

[The Chairman]

How does a cannon ball explode? It's just a lump of metal.Or am I missing something?

Not all cannon balls are solid shot: some are shells filled with explosives. Unless the diver knows how to tell the difference, he should treat it as explosive. i am not sure that I could tell the difference, especially if it was encrusted. It seems that there were a lot of assumptions made and I still wonder where it came from. Read the article I cited for how the fun ended for a civil war buff who buffed one too many times on what he thought was solid shot. Here's a list of projectiles that a cannon can fire: List of cannon projectiles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia