Man killed by cannonball

Dangerous hobby

In early February of this year, a man by the name of Sam White of Chester Virginia was blown up when a civil war cannonball exploded while trying to restore it. Mr. White had been taking up this hobby full time ever since he had retired from delivering packages for UPS in 1998. He was very passionate about what he did, collecting things as small as bullets amongst other things at various old civil war battlegrounds. He was well educated in the things he was collecting and performed all the disarm of all live munitions. The particular Cannonball that was being disarmed was a naval cannonball which is more powerful and the fuse is more complex than the infantry cannonballs. He had 18 more in his driveway waiting to be restored when the explosion happened. Mr. White had also restored over 1600 shells for museums and collectors. When the cannonball exploded, a piece of shrapnel had lodged itself in the porch of a neighbors house a quarter mile away.