Adding a bit of excitement to an otherwise ordinary day at the potato chip factory, an unexploded WWI-era German grenade was discovered in a shipment of French spuds in Hong Kong on Saturday.
The device was safely detonated by Hong Kong police on the grounds of the factory, a production facility for Calbee chips (which are the bomb, by the way).
“The grenade was in an unstable condition because it has been previously discharged but failed to detonate,” Superintendent Wilfred Wong Ho-hon told reporters.
A police video shows bomb disposal officers packing the grenade into a drainage channel at the factory before blowing it up. (Huh, guess those action-packed police promo videos were more true to life than we gave them credit for.)
Exclusive!
We detonated a German made WW1 hand grenade earlier this afternoon.獨家！
拆彈專家💣較早時間引爆了一枚第一次世界大戰時德國製的手榴彈。#HongKong #Police #Emergency #safeguarding #EOD pic.twitter.com/xc1KxsZwjK— Hong Kong Police Force (@hkpoliceforce) February 2, 2019
Saturday’s controlled detonation wasn’t a first for Hong Kong police, who are routinely called in to deal with unexploded ordnance left over from WWII, often turned up by hikers and construction workers.
Last year, motorists were warned away from north Wan Chai after police were forced to close roads and evacuate residents while they dealt with an aerial bomb unearthed during construction on the Shatin-Central MTR line.
The year before, police were forced to similarly evacuate an area near the University of Hong Kong after construction workers discovered a 225-kilogram bomb.
Not even beach-goers were safe, with a volunteer discovering an unexploded bomb on a Lamma Island beach in July of 2017.
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