A Bremen man out looking for scrap metal wound up clearing a street instead, after three iron spheres he found in a trash pile were confirmed as cannonballs and brought a bomb squad rolling into town. The discovery last Monday briefly pushed neighbors out of their homes as crews shut down the 100 block of North Broad Street so specialists could check the mystery orbs and make sure the village was not sitting on live ordnance.
According to WBNS, the finder, Chad Yoke Jr., spotted the three rounds in a trash pile and called the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office. Body-camera footage shows deputies taping off the sidewalk and requesting a bomb squad unit. Columbus Division of Fire Lt. Nick Davis collected the cannonballs, and the fire department later destroyed them to ensure public safety.
Why responders treated the finds as potential explosives
Historic cannon shot can contain internal cavities that may still hold powder or residues, and old ordnance has been known to detonate when disturbed. That is why crews treat any cannonball-like round as dangerous until proven otherwise. In one example, state police in Massachusetts x-rayed and then countercharged a Civil War-era round in 2022, and Gulf Islands National Seashore officials detonated more than 190 Civil War-era cannonballs uncovered after Hurricane Ida in 2021, underscoring the real risk of buried munitions; see reporting from Boston.com and a National Park Service notice about the Perdido Key find. The caution is procedural: old artillery rounds are treated like live ordnance until experts say otherwise.
Local history points to a souvenir explanation
The Fairfield County Historical Society told reporters that finds like this are rare and that “a soldier bringing a cannonball home as a memento is the most logical explanation,” per 10TV. Local tourism and history resources also note that parts of the county fairgrounds once served as Camp Anderson, a Civil War training area, which helps explain why remnants from 19th-century military activity occasionally surface in the region; the Camp Anderson marker is documented by Visit Fairfield County.
What to do if you find suspected ordnance
Officials urge residents to leave suspicious metal objects alone and call law enforcement instead of picking them up, since moving or handling old munitions can be dangerous and is often illegal. The National Park Service similarly cautions the public not to touch, remove, or disturb historic ordnance and to report discoveries so trained teams can make them safe. Authorities in this case followed that protocol and disposed of the rounds to protect the neighborhood.
