For years, Steve Martin of Atascosa County, Texas, kept a heavy, rust-coloured object on his desk as a conversation piece, unaware it was a potentially deadly Civil War artillery shell. His son, Jarrett, had found the object while fishing along the Guadalupe River and brought it home, where the family assumed it was an inert relic or perhaps a dummy bomb. The assumption went unchallenged until a truck driver with military experience visited Martin's office and warned him that the object looked like live ordnance. Martin contacted the Atascosa County Sheriff's Office, which brought in military explosive ordnance specialists to examine it. The technicians identified the roughly 20-pound object as a live Civil War-era Parrott artillery shell. After more than 160 years, the shell still contained an explosive charge. Rather than risk leaving it intact, specialists transported it to a military explosives range, where it was safely detonated.
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