Granny finds grenade in groceries

[dougadam]

Granny finds grenade in groceries
Thu Mar 1, 2007 6:32 AM ET

NAPLES, Italy (Reuters) - A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at the her local market found a live grenade among the spuds.

"I found a bomb in the potatoes," Olga Mauriello said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

"I went to the market to buy some potatoes and that's where the bomb was. But this bomb was covered in dirt, and I put it in water and got all dirt off. And then I realized 'It's a bomb'!"

Police said the pine cone-shaped grenade, which had no pin and was still active, was the same type used by U.S. soldiers in Europe in World War Two. Authorities believe the mix-up happened at a farm in France, where the grenade was plucked from the ground along with potatoes.

To the woman's relief, police and explosives experts in the small town of San Giorgio a Cremano, near Naples, recovered the grenade and safely detonated it on Wednesday.

But Mauriello was still shaking off her close brush with death. It didn't look like a potato and it was heavier than one. But what if she had cooked it?

"If I hadn't felt its weight, I wouldn't even have realized that it was a bomb," she said.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2007-03-01T113138Z_01_L2889493_RTRUKOC_0_US-ITALY-GRANDMOTHER-GRENADE.xml&src=rss