A Hong Kong Factory Found This Scary WWI Weapon In Potatoes
Whether on the news or by word of mouth, we've all heard the stories: someone found something weird in their food. Allegedly, bandages have shown up in Pizza Hut crust, feathers were spotted in McNuggets, and someone once discovered a fingernail in their Taco Bell nachos. If you aren't grossed out yet, the claims go on and on.
To be fair, those stories were all from fast food chains, where kitchen workers tend to be in a rush. We expect store-bought food items to be safer, right? Well, think again. Remember #TunaGate in 2015? (If you don't, the quick version is a customer found crab larvae in a can of tuna. Ew.) Remember when a Whole Foods shopper found a Black Widow spider in her bag of grapes? If you don't, we apologize for the mental image.
The point is, food can be really scary. Eat This, Not That shares the stories of an Englishman who found a dead mouse in his loaf of bakery bread, a man in Singapore who discovered a cockroach in a bag of anchovies, and Australian pub patrons who fell ill after being served gelato containing fecal matter. Do we even want to know what they found in the potatoes in Hong Kong?
Bomb-de-terre, anyone?
That's right. When a Hong Kong chip factory examined their latest potato shipment from France, they found a weapon from WWI. How on earth did a German WWI grenade wind up in a French potato shipment? According to Australia's ABC News, the grenade was most likely buried in the field and just happened to be dug up with the potatoes.
Fortunately, no one was hurt, and local police safely detonated the grenade. Of course, those who heard the story took to Reddit to comment. Several commenters made plays on words — thank you, user Skruestik, for blessing us with "pomme-de-guerre." Others mentioned similar stories of discovering WWI/II weapons in European countries, and some made jokes about throwing potatoes at people.
Ironically enough, potato chip manufacturing was almost shut down during WWII due to rationing. If it wasn't for potato chips' explosive popularity worldwide (pun intended, sorry, not sorry), we might not have had them today.