Archaeologists working at a historic battlefield at Gettysburg recently made an explosive find: a live 160-year-old artillery shell that had to be detonated by a specially trained U.S. Army disposal team.
The shell was found on Feb. 8 at Little Round Top(opens in new tab), a hill that offered Union forces a strategic position during the Civil War. On July 2, 1863, the second day of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, the North and the South struggled for 90 minutes to control Little Round Top, leaving thousands of soldiers dead. The rocky hill was not, however, an ideal platform for an artillery offensive, as Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee suggested in his 1864 report(opens in new tab) about the Gettysburg campaign. Lee reported that Confederate Gen. Longstreet was delayed by Union forces firing from Little Round Top, but Longstreet decided to go around them rather than attempt to take the hill.
