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Man Used Live Civil War Explosive as Paperweight for Years

The heavy object, kept on a desk for years, turned out to be an artillery shell.

What Steve Martin thought was a harmless paperweight piece sitting on his office desk for years turned out to be a live Civil War-era explosive.

The Atascosa County, Texas, native had kept the 20-pound iron object in his office after his son, Jarrett, found it while fishing along the Guadalupe River several years ago.

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Martin believed it was nothing more than an old relic until a truck driver with military training visited his office. The driver took one look at the object and warned Martin it “could really be live ordnance.”

“He said, ‘I have military training, and that really looks like it could be the real deal,’” Martin recalled.

Martin immediately contacted the Atascosa County Sheriff’s Office, which requested assistance from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team from Lackland Air Force Base.

“I thought it was really some sort of dummy,” Martin told KABB’s Destany Fuller. “Now I’m thinking this thing is making a dummy out of me.”

Bomb technicians confirmed the object was a Civil War-era Parrott round, an artillery shell designed by engineer Robert Parrott in the mid-1800s that was considered an active explosive.

“All this time I had this antique bomb there that potentially could have exploded,” Martin said.

Deputy Chief Eric Kaiser said discoveries like the one are exceptionally rare.

“It’s amazing that those things are still turning up almost 200 years later,” Kaiser said. “People stumble across ordnance from time to time, but usually it’s not anywhere near as old as that one was.”

Authorities transported the shell to Camp Bullis, where EOD specialists safely detonated it.

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Martin said he had hoped the historic artifact could be preserved, particularly because he has ancestors who fought in the Civil War.

He now plans to be more careful about the items he displays on his desk. “If somebody hands you something, it might be a hot potato.”

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