Just discovered something quite interesting. During the Battle of Messines Ridge in WWI, the British started digging 22 mines. 1 was discovered by the Germans who neutralised it. There was underground fighting during the digging of these mines when they ran into Germans engaged in counter mine activities underground. 19 of the remaining 21 were exploded--the other two were too far outside the area of the battle so they decided not to use them. The British then lost the paperwork saying exactly where they were. 1 exploded in 1955, fortunately killing only a cow. The other one is still out there somewhere...
As an interesting extra, the 19 mines going off were loud enough to be heard in Dublin and comprised the loudest man made explosion at that time.
No comments:
Post a Comment