Woman Unknowingly Used A Grenade As A Hammer For 20 Years

A 90-year-old woman just found out the hammer she's been using to drive nails and use for other purposes for the last 20 years is actually an active explosive ordinance.

The woman, named Qin, told Chinese reporters that she was working on her farm about 20 years ago near Xiangyang when she found a weird "metal lump" with a wooden handle in the field. She thought it was a makeshift hammer, she took it home and used it to pound all kinds of hard stuff like nuts and metal nails.

It was only last week that a team of guys working on demolishing her old house noticed that she was using a hand grenade as a hammer the woman understood every time she used it she'd been severely risking her life.

The "hammer" was well used - police said the grenade's wooden handle had become smooth and glossy from years of use, metal head of it was full of dents.

“I’ve been using it at home to pound red pepper, crack nuts, and hammer in nails,” Qin said casually in an interview.

People guessed that the grenade may have just been a training grenade and that's why it hadn't exploded on the woman, but police debunked that idea when they announced that the grenade was "properly destroyed" to prevent accidental injury.

“Apparently, even hand grenades have principles and won’t explode on kind-hearted elderly people,” one person commented on Weibo.

“It’s impressive that Grandma Qin used the hand grenade as a hammer for over 20 years without ever pulling the fuse out of curiosity,” someone else wrote.

News reports from China stated that the old hand grenade was so badly damaged that part of the fuse was exposed, and had she been curious enough to pull it, it would've gone off.

Read more at SCMP