Road reopens after antique cannonball found in garage in NE Georgia

Shortly before 3 p.m., the sheriff’s office said GBI bomb technicians were working to move the “basketball-size cannonball” for safe detonation. That came after Special Agent Mike Goelz told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the state agency responded to “evaluate possible military ordnance.”

The ordeal began when a resident alerted deputies that a cannonball he had been given recently might contain black powder and he was concerned it might be hazardous, sheriff’s office spokesman Rob Moore said.

A decade ago, a cannonball was unearthed by construction workers as they were building the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. Atlanta police said they contacted military personnel who went to a secure location in July 2013 to examine the cannonball, which contained black powder and small ball bearings. The Air Force then took possession of the remains of the cannonball because it was military property.

“It turns out it was filled with black powder and small ball bearings and (is) considered a live round,” police said at the time.

In March 2022, an unexploded Civil War shell was found in the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield, where it was removed by the Cobb County bomb squad. The Union parrot shell had been there for nearly 160 years.

The use of black powder makes Civil War shells much more likely to be inactive than ordnance manufactured later.

The Cobb bomb squad also removed a cannonball-sized device from a home in December that led Marietta police to close Barnes Mill Road from Wallace Road to Souring Drive, authorities said. The homeowner found the “Civil War-era unexploded ordnance” in her backyard, 11Alive reported. It’s a term for an explosive weapon that has yet to go off.

— Please return to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for updates.