No, You Cannot Fly Around With WWI Artillery Shells In Your Checked Baggage

(TSA)

Much like the time Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips was told he couldn’t bring grenades, inactive or not, in his luggage while flying, some teens on the way home from visiting European battlefields had to part with their souvenir World War I artillery shells. Bummer.

And by souvenir, I mean that these were actual artillery shells used during WWI — the teens told officials they picked them up at a French WWI artillery range near a museum that collects military memorabilia and apparently thought it’d be cool to bring home to the states, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

The shells made it out of London Heathrow Airport, until baggage screeners at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago found them. No more souvenirs.

A Transportation Security Administration spokesman says the shells are French World War I-era 75 mm artillery shells, and that a bomb disposal crew said the shells were inert and that no one had been in danger by their presence in the bags.

The teens traveled on home to Seattle without being charged, while the shells will be sent to the explosive ordinance disposal team at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane in Indiana and never taken out to show/impress pals or used as extra large paperweights. Also, people probably don’t use paperweights anymore, righT?

WWI artillery shells found in luggage at O’Hare [Chicago Sun-Times]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist