Stolen Civil War cannonballs found in luggage

TSA staff found five Civil War-era cannonballs in a passenger's checked suitcase at Gulf Shores International Airport in Alabama. Investigators found that the munitions were missing from nearby Fort Morgan; a child supposedly pilfered them and sneaked them into grandma's luggage.

Appearing as large opaque masses on the X-ray screen, the five well-rusted balls were wrapped in paper towels together in a bag, the largest roughly grapefruit-sized and the smallest about an inch across. KSLA News reports that the officer at the scanner, Justin Dupree, thought he was dealing with a live explosive.

"My first thought was, 'I couldn't see a fuse and need to get some help quick,'" Dupree said. "I couldn't see the entire item but was scared I might have been holding a live explosive."

Vintage cannoballs can indeed be dangerous due to old fuses, charges and explosive residues. In 2008, Civil War buff Sam White was killed in his driveway in Chester, Virginia, when a 140-year old cannonball he was cleaning (with a grinding tool) exploded.

The old balls taken from Fort Morgan were inert, though, and their origin identified by paint markings applied to items in its collection. The sheriff's office determined that a child took the cannonballs from a fort storage area and hid them in his grandmother's checked bag. She told deputies she didn't know they were stolen. The fort's director did not want charges pressed, according to the Associated Press, and the pair were allowed to board their flight to Oklahoma City.

Fort Morgan, guarding the mouth of Mobile Bay since 1834 and shaping the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay, is now a museum run by the Alabama Historical Commission.

TSA finds stolen Civil War-era cannonballs in a passenger's suitcase at an Alabama airport [AP News]