A Family Found a Nazi Bomb in Their Shed and Don't Know Where It's From

A woman in Idaho was helping her parents clean out their shed last week when they came across an undetonated Nazi artillery shell from 1938, Idaho Statesman reports.

Diana Landa told the Statesman that her parents have lived in their house in Meridian, Idaho, for the past 25 years and they rarely use their outdoor shed—so everyone is completely at a loss about how a 79-year-old WWII explosive with the propellant still on wound up in the American Northwest.

Thinking that the foot-long antique bomb could be of interest to a museum or just a nice centerpiece to tie a room together or whatever, Landa loaded it into her car and took it home to Kona, Idaho. When she mentioned the discovery to a friend at work, though, the gravity of keeping an undetonated explosive in her home started to sink in.

"[The co-worker] is really into history," Landa told the Statesman. "He was saying it could be an explosive and how unstable these things can be if they're old."

She hit up the Idaho Historical Society about the find, who in turn pointed her toward the police since, well, it's a huge bomb. The cops sent out a bomb squad, who opted to not let Landa keep her old Nazi weapon and called a military explosives team to remove it. A military spokesman confirmed to the Statesman that the explosive was a "WWII-era 37mm German round" and that they safely detonated it for safety.

How the Nazi military weapon made its way from the Third Reich to a western Idaho shed will probably remain a mystery, but at least Landa has made her parents' home a little safer, since they're not living in close proximity to a loaded explosive anymore.

"[I] have no idea how it got to Idaho and still loaded, but it's pretty crazy," Landa wrote in a Facebook post. "Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience."