Credit: WSBTV.comThis year alone we’ve seen construction workers uncover a mysterious statue and a vampire grave. And now a crew in Atlanta has uncovered a cannonball likely fired by Union troops during the Civil War.
According to the initial report from WSBTV, the round was found Thursday near Centennial Olympic Park. The police were called in, the street and area nearby were closed off while SWAT and bomb technicians investigated and the round was eventually treated as an unexploded device.
The bomb technicians were unable to precisely date the cannonball.
But, the Associated Press followed up over the weekend and spoke with Gordon Jones, the Atlanta History Center’s senior military historian and curator. Jones said there are two likely theories behind the history of the cannonball.
The first is that the round was fired by Union troops in 1864 from outside the city. The target could have been the Confederate’s Railroad Roundhouse. The roundhouse would have been a key military target and was located in the area the cannonball was found.
Another, much less exciting theory is that this was just a misplaced round. Jones said the cannonball could have simply been misplaced by the Confederate army while being transported or in storage.
