Construction worker killed when WW2 bomb detonates in Germany

[jakeXT]

Source: UPI

EUSKIRCHEN, Germany, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- A construction worker was killed Friday in the German city of Euskirchen in an explosion believed to be from a World War II bomb, police said.

Eight people were injured, two of them seriously, The Local.de reported. The worker who died was operating an excavator, which caught fire when the bomb went off.

Euskirchen, a town of 55,000 about 19 miles southeast of Cologne and 25 miles from the Belgian border, is in an area targeted by British and U.S. bombers during the war because it was the center of German heavy industry. Unexploded bombs are still turning up.

The construction site is on Alfred Nobel Strasse, a street named after the inventor of dynamite.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/01/03/Construction-worker-killed-when-WW2-bomb-detonates-in-Germany/UPI-37271388765998/

[MADem]

1. Irony: The construction site is on Alfred Nobel Strasse....

UXB still turn up on rare occasion in UK and Japan as well....I think they need to do ground scans before they start digging over that way as a matter of routine.

[jakeXT]

2. Some think it was a blockbuster aka "cookie"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb

According to initial reports, the effects of the blast can be seen over a kilometer-wide radius of the site where it occurred. While most buildings suffered broken windows, the ceiling of a nearby supermarket has reportedly come down from the blast.
Twitter users have been posting images of shattered windows in the city. According to police, the explosion was heard up to 20 kilometers away in Bonn.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/wwii-bomb-explodes-in-germany-killing-digger-driver/article/365051

[MADem]

5. If they heard it twenty klicks away, it wasn't a firecracker.

People must have been scared outta their gourds.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Fair amount of damage some way away:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/weltkriegsbombe-explosion-in-euskirchen-fotostrecke-105473-8.html

[jakeXT]

7. It's easy to miss one

[Common Sense Party]

3. Coincidence, not irony.

Irony: : the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really think especially in order to be funny

: a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected

[MADem]

4. Irony is often not funny. And I meant "irony." Not coincidence.

Here's a definition with a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

Perhaps you aren't aware that Alfred Nobel is not only the guy who invented dynamite, but he's also the "Nobel" in "Nobel PEACE Prize."

This construction worker was killed by a bomb, an instrument of WAR.

[LittleGirl]

8. +1 eom

[Zorro]

9. Heard it reported that 700 unexploded bombs are found annually in Germany

One must have extraordinary courage to defuse them.

The PBS series Danger:UXB still remains the most intense television series I have ever seen.

[raccoon]

10. Don't they ever get stale and not blow up? nt

[jmowreader]

11. The older they get, the more unstable they get