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[Dave]

Luckiest, maybe - apparently the dumbest, too, because he smuggled home a live grenade with its pin out.

As Enos once said to his boss... "Sir, they say God watches out for drunks, childrens, and fools... and I don' t drink."

[shadowinthelight]

Could have made for an interesting game of hot potato.

[scantrontb]

Rick Young of Eastern Oklahoma County discovered the grenade along with other souvenirs from WWII — including a samurai sword and a rifle — in a box that had been stored in his garage for more than a decade.

i wonder if the sword got confiscated, seeing as how if it was truly a Samurai's sword, it's probably illegal for him to own it, as it can fall under the looting clauses in military law, as well as it being an heirloom of whichever family the swords owner was from...

[AnotherFairportfan]

Rick Young of Eastern Oklahoma County discovered the grenade along with other souvenirs from WWII — including a samurai sword and a rifle — in a box that had been stored in his garage for more than a decade.

i wonder if the sword got confiscated, seeing as how if it was truly a Samurai's sword, it's probably illegal for him to own it, as it can fall under the looting clauses in military law, as well as it being an heirloom of whichever family the swords owner was from...

That's the thing i was wondering about - the standard Japanese officer's issue sword was more or less a katana, and most people simply call any sword that shape a "samurai" sword.

[Dave]

i wonder if the sword got confiscated, seeing as how if it was truly a Samurai's sword, it's probably illegal for him to own it, as it can fall under the looting clauses in military law, as well as it being an heirloom of whichever family the swords owner was from...

That's the thing i was wondering about - the standard Japanese officer's issue sword was more or less a katana, and most people simply call any sword that shape a "samurai" sword.

That's a good possibility. According to one site I just read, Japanese officers were required to give up their swords when they surrendered... or it could have belonged to an officer who died in battle. After the war there were piles of these swords accumulated; some were disposed if in the ocean, many were melted down for the steel to be used as construcion material.

Picking them up as souvenirs or trading for them seems to have been common practice for American soldiers.

There is a practice of repatriating such swords to Japan nowadays, especally if the original owner or his family can be identified, but as far as I know this is a voluntary practice. I kinda doubt that any criminal charges for allegedly possessing stolen/looted property could be pursued at this time... very hard to prove that the sword wasn't acquired quite legally in post-war Japan, and without such proof confiscation of the sword would be an illegal seizure.

[TazManiac]

At a certain point, esp the later in the war you got, the swords issued to Officers and NCOs were just ceremonial 'crappy steel' assembly line products.

See Guntō on Wikipedia, and here's a site I'd never seen before... MilitaryItems.com

Reading how many where just dumped in lagoons has me wondering if any survived, (even if unrealistic, esp in Salt Water) it could make for part of a good story plot...

[Dave]

Reading how many where just dumped in lagoons has me wondering if any survived, (even if unrealistic, esp in Salt Water) it could make for part of a good story plot...

Well, there was that one really excellent katana, that a savvy cook in the Japanese navy managed to protect by baking it inside some captured British pastry flour, before locking the whole thing into a case and sinking it overboard.

The legend goes that the person who finds it, and can successfully wield it will become the next Emperor of Japan.

[TazManiac]

...
The legend goes that the person who finds it, and can successfully wield it will become the next Emperor of Japan.

aaaaaand, the Power of Castle GraySkull!

[MerchManDan]

Reading how many where just dumped in lagoons has me wondering if any survived, (even if unrealistic, esp in Salt Water) it could make for part of a good story plot...

Well, there was that one really excellent katana, that a savvy cook in the Japanese navy managed to protect by baking it inside some captured British pastry flour, before locking the whole thing into a case and sinking it overboard.

The legend goes that the person who finds it, and can successfully wield it will become the next Emperor of Japan.

Excali-tempura?

[Dave]

Excali-tempura?

I was thinking "The Sword in the Scone", but your idea works at least as well!

[MerchManDan]

Ah, of course. That does make more sense, considering tempura is fried, not baked.

[Jabberwonky]

Bomb squad detonates WWII grenade discovered by war veteran’s son

A quiet Sunday morning in Afghanistan, I was manning the laundry by myself as the other workers went to the gate to claim our local workers when something hit the wooden structure that was the floor of the tent. Curious, I went on a quick inspection to see what might have done that and saw one of the AC units venting a vigorous stream of white vapor. An unexploded rocket was my first thought, so I backed off and radioed our companies security team. I then grabbed a roll of yellow "Danger: Do Not Cross" tape to cordon off the area and when I came back to it, the venting had stopped, but there were two soldiers reaching over the unit (the size of a large home heat pump) poking at something with a stick. I stepped close, but not too close, and asked them what they were doing.
"It's a RPG.(Rocket Propelled Grenade) One of them replied and poked again.
"Don't you think you should be leaving it alone?" I asked. I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to potentially lethal explosives.
"It didn't go off." The other soldier replied.
I paused for a second, marveling at the immortality of youth before again asking a question. "Does that mean it WON'T go off, does it?"
They were both quiet as they looked at each other and then they quickly moved away and helped me cordon the area while I waited for DOD. (Disposal of Demolitions)

Life on an Afghan FOB was interesting.

[lake_wrangler]

They apparently need to learn, and quick, the difference between being immortal, and merely not having died yet...

[Dave]

Also... while soldiers of a given rank and specialty are often considered to be fungible resources from the Army's point of view, the soldiers themselves (and their families) really ought to not take this very seriously from a personal point of view. Humans are not Jem'Hadar.

[Alkarii]

How did someone like that manage to live long enough to get into the military?

[Dave]

How did someone like that manage to live long enough to get into the military?

Most high schools (even today) do not have undetonated RPG rounds sitting around.

[AnotherFairportfan]

How did someone like that manage to live long enough to get into the military?

Most high schools (even today) do not have undetonated RPG rounds sitting around.

One of my dad's relatives was a high school principal in Chicago.

At one point (between WW1 and WW2, i think) a kid showed up with three (live, as it turned out) grenades strung by the ring on his belt.

When the teacher sent the kid to the office, he took one look, sat the kid down in a chair with instructions that were apparently heavy on "...and if you DO move, and we both survive, you're going to wish we hadn't...", he rang the fire alarm and called the Bomb Squad.

I'm that order.

Everyone survived.

I wish i could have seen what happened when the kid got home with THAT note...

[scantrontb]

How did someone like that manage to live long enough to get into the military?

the Army has a somewhat... relaxed... standard for the apparent IQ of their members, in order to get their manning levels up to required needs. if they were TOO picky they wouldn't be able to get the needed bodies in the door, and it would make them look bad on their evaluations... i hesitate to say that it is "typical" but the mental image of Forrest Gump being in the Army are somewhat stereotypical. not saying it's TRUE, mind you... but stereotypical...

[lake_wrangler]

Super Planet Crash!  Create your own solar system!  Will it last five hundred years?
 
Screenshots of two games.  The upper is one i got bored with after it looked as if the eccentricity of Planet Four's orbit had pretty much reached a maximum.  The lower is one i designed to see how quickly it would result in a planet being expelled from the system at the right) - which is one of the two end conditions of the game (you lose, insofar as "win/lose" applies), the other being that the system has survived five hundred years (you win).
 
The white bounding circle is 2 AU; the expelled planet in the lower image is at 2 AU at the right side of the system.

Great! Just what I needed: another way to waste time online!

I find it amusing and interesting, at the same time (maybe I'm just easily amused...). I tried to go for high scores, with varied results. My higher scores always involved putting a dwarf star in close orbit to the sun, and try to see what else I can make orbit around those. However, doing so often caused one planet to eventually slingshot right out of the system... Other times, one planet crashed into another, before bounding off. This would happen because having two stars at the center caused some planets (but not all) to have elliptical courses (which often gradually changed direction, as well), intersecting further planets that were not as affected by the center stars, and had a more standard orbit. Of course, you could always use only the smaller planets, in relatively tame orbits, and easily reach 500 years... but it's the multipliers that make for higher scores (along with the fact that larger bodies count for more points) The multipliers account for crowdedness (how many bodies you have in orbit, for a maximum of 12 bodies), and habitability bonus (there is a highlighted section in the mid-rage of possible orbits that is called a habitable region; you get more points for having more celestial bodies within that area)

The only thing I deplore of this game is that it stops the system whenever the browser (or even just the tab it's in) loses focus. So the only way to see how far you can reach, yearwise, in any given system, is to have it running with the browser being the active application, and not touch anything else on the computer. Fortunately, the controls do allow to speed up the process (and to slow it down again, should you choose to do so...) The speeding up process is what accounts for the weird lines around the orbit of the dwarf star in some of the screenshots.

This was my first serious score (you can see the green planet shooting off at the top, below the score window):


My next serious score was this one:


Later, I even managed to reach 500 years, though with a lower score than my previous "failure" (inasmuch as the goal is to reach 500 years, and not necessarily a high score...):


Some of my failures were amusingly catastrophic (notice the red planet crashing not once, but four times into the green one, before bouncing out of the 2AU barrier):


I did almost make it to 500 years again, and this was also my highest ever score:

[AnotherFairportfan]

Blessing of the animals, Spain, St Anton's Day. (17 January) The range of reactions is wonderful.
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Full gallery (22 pictures, including another one of the ferret and one of the parrot here) is here.