A French onion delivery made eyes water more than usual when Dutch authorities discovered two hand grenades hidden among the vegetables, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Wednesday.
The grenades, dating from 1925, were found in a consignment of onions heading from France to a factory in the northern Dutch province of Zeeland.
Dutch authorities asked the OPCW to examine the find.
"The projectiles were identified to be consistent with pre-1925 French and German manufactured old chemical weapons," the Hague-based organization concluded after investigating the case.
"However, the type of chemical fill could not be identified," it added in a statement.
The reason for the weapons' presence in the delivery remains a mystery.
The grenades will be destroyed, but since the Netherlands lacks a dedicated destruction facility for this type of object, they will be "transferred as toxic waste to the specialized chemical dismantling facility in Poelkapelle, Belgium," the OPCW said.
This photograph taken on May 19, 2025 shows an old First World War shell in a X-Ray device to determine if it still contains toxic chemicals, at the DOVO demining team base camp in Poelkapelle, Belgium.
NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP via Getty Images
The Netherlands thanked the Belgian authorities for their help.
The strange discovery came just days after a live grenade was found by a toddler in the front yard of his family's home Washington state. Authorities said a 3-year-old boy discovered a World War II-era hand grenade, and a bomb squad removed and disposed of the explosive. No one was injured, according to the sheriff's office.
