The Mountain Home Air Force Base military explosives team inspects a Nazi-era bomb found in a shed in Idaho. Image by Facebook

By Aiden Pink June 6, 2017

An Idaho woman discovered a Nazi artillery shell while cleaning out her parents’ shed last week.

Diana Landa said that her parents had rarely used the shed in their longtime home outside of Boise and had no idea how the explosive got there. The device had a Nazi insignia and was etched with the year 1938.

Landa took the bomb home with her and placed it in her own shed, but was later convinced by a co-worker to consult an expert in case the device was still live.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

“He’s, like, really into history,” Landa told the Associated Press. “He was saying it could be an explosive and how unstable these things can be if they’re old.”

The bomb squad from Mountain Home Air Force Base came to her home and X-rayed the shell, determining that it was a Nazi 37-mm round that was “found to be hazardous,” according to a base spokeswoman.

Landa wrote on Facebook that it was “definitely a once in a lifetime experience.”

“It’s a little scary,” she told the AP. “Now I think about it, we should’ve been more careful. But we didn’t know anything about weapons.”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Make a Passover Gift Today!

$90 $180

$360

Other amount