The bomb squad had to be scrambled after someone donated a live World War One device to a charity shop in Norwich.
Volunteers at the Priscilla Bacon Hospice were sorting through contributions at a warehouse in Drayton when they found the ‘British WW1 fuse’ on Thursday.
Initially unsure exactly what the item was, they sent a photograph to a military specialist.
The charity’s operations head Hugo Stevenson said: ‘The expert came back with great haste.
‘He sent an urgent message to the charity stating the item was a fuse section from an artillery shell, which appeared to be a live explosive and could be potentially volatile as it was over 100 years old.
‘He said it was the fuse section of an artillery shell – the nose cone – that explodes first.’
Workers were quickly evacuated, roads were closed and the Army was called.
A bomb squad, from Colchester in Essex, was sent in and they moved the device to a farmer’s field where there were no people around.
When they set the bomb off, the explosion was so big it proved ‘the shell had indeed been live’.
The Army confirmed the fuse had been ‘safely removed and destroyed’.
It comes after a bomb disposal expert was killed because a World War Two device he had collected blew up in his flat.
Stephen Atkinson, 57, was helping clear mines in the Solomon Islands was killed when one exploded in his room.
He died along with his Australian colleague Trent Lee after the device he was handling went off on September 20 last year.
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