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Roman Ingots to Shield Particle Detector

This odd story marries archeology with physics. Roman lead ingots mined 2,000 years ago are an archaeological treasure. They are also perfect for shielding a nuclear particle detector for cutting-edge physics experiments.
The 120 lead ingots, each weighing about 33 kilograms, come from a larger load recovered 20 years ago from a Roman shipwreck, the remains of a vessel that sank between 80 B.C. and 50 B.C. off the coast of Sardinia. As a testimony to the extent of ancient Rome's manufacturing and trading capacities, the ingots are of great value to archaeologists, who have been preserving and studying them at the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, southern Sardinia. What makes the ingots equally valuable to physicists is the fact that over the past 2,000 years their lead has almost completely lost its natural radioactivity. It is therefore the perfect material with which to shield the CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) detector, which Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) is building at the Gran Sasso laboratory.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100415/full/news.2010.186.html -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

(image credit: INFN/Cagliari Archeological Superintendence)

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This is quite common, a lot of metals produce after ww2 are too contamianted with nuclear fallout. The metal from WW1 scuttled ships in Scapa Flow, I believe, have been in outer space.
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While it is certainly a spent Minie Ball (do I get credit for being the first to spell it correctly?). Perhaps it is the famous one that supposedly got a woman pregnant after passing through a soldiers testes.

Mad Scientist XL
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It's a civil-war-era coprolite; further scientific analysis revealed that the individual that made the *ahem* deposit, was in fact full of the stuff.

Typebike, XL, Ash Gray
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Alternate theory, perhaps the marks on it are from it being bitten during some battlefield surgery. Researching famous bullet-bitings right now.

Mad Scientist XL
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That is a long-range cordless drill circa 1860. They were eventually replaced by modern battery powered models due to lack of accuracy in hole position and the need to buy a completely new tool to drill different sized holes.
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Unicorn Coprolite. It is a little known fact that although officially neutral the government of Unicorn Island secretly sent large supplies of the stuff from their ancient prancing grounds to the Union Army for use as ammunition and are at least partially responsible for the victory over the Confederates.

Request Denied Medium Navy.
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It's the lumbar vertebrae from the lesser giant tree hamster of Pago Pago. Thankfully, they went extinct in 1953. Notoriously prone to stowing away, they wreaked havoc aboard wooden sailing vessels by gnawing straight through the hull below the waterline. Great numbers of them were lost at sea, until eventually their numbers could not be sustained due to their relatively long gestation. Since their extinction, boat captains have enjoyed the reprieve from losing their craft.

Occam's Razor T-Shirt
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As others have stated it is a Minié ball (Civil war era ammunition) but more specifically it is a Union one. The Union used ones with 3 groves where as the Confederates used ones with 2 groves.
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Sorry, didn't see the rule not to link to your blog and I don't know how to remove that info. I'm just used to typing it in, everywhere. Not trying to get

Here's my comment without link:

Looks like a minie ball to me, Civil War era, not in the best of shape. The number of grooves (which are kind of hard to see because it's so pitted) make it look like a Union minie ball I own.
eople to link up.
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Oh, it's a minie ball. you can actually buy them, or replicas of them, at the Civil War Museum in Gettysburg, PA. This one looks special though. Is it the one that killed Ms. Wade, the only civilian death during the battle of Gettysburg?

(if it is, can I have a Great Vocab Did Not Save the Thesaurus size S?)
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It's a piece of roman aged fossilized human poo (coprolite), found in Gloucester recently and touched by many school children. And is currently housed in Gloucester city museum, UK. :D

Comic Skull and Cross Bones, Medium - merci
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This an amazing piece of history! A patient was severely constipated, unable to have a bowel movement for almost a year. Doctors tried every remedy they could but to no avail. Eventually P.T. Barnum decided he would have the answer to the poor patient's troubles and brought in a (probably doctored) photograph of Abraham Lincoln wearing his trademark stovepipe hat and a pink mankini. The image was so frightening to the patient his bowels suddenly constricted, shooting out this piece of poop which injured a nurse before embedding itself in the wall. This piece is now in a museum and is the origin of the term "sh*ttin' bricks"!

Average Bear T-shirt
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This is the result of the first attempt to build a paper plane, ever.

Sadly it did not work.

I'd go for the "I Survived The Large Hadron Collider - S"
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Whitcwa is correct. This is NOT Minnie's balls, but one of Mickey's balls. They were removed at mouse-puberty by ol' Walt to maintain Mickey's trademark, high-pitched squeaky voice.

Come to the dark side we have cookies... med, black
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Its a biting bullet. I usually like to make up a wild story, but the teeth marks attest to the human suffering endured by soldiers past, present and future. During the civil war a soldier was gravely wounded and surgery was performed this was used in place of anesthetic. I don't recomend you chew on led, but to leave teeth marks this deep shows you that whatever the poor sould endured, it was bad. Yes , it is a minie ball, a great leap in balistics that tactics failed to make, so the carnage of the times was multiplied.
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This object is pictured smaller than actual size. It is the space vessel used in the Georges Melies' 1902 classic film "A Trip to the Moon" (Une Voyage dans la Lune). It was recovered during the Apollo moon landings by taking it apart to fit inside each lunar module and returned to earth where it was painstakingly reassembled. Send me the "I Do What The Voices in My Wife's Head Tell Me" t-shirt in XL, serene green please.
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This is a mousetrap and petrified cheese from an ancient Egyptian pyramid. It reveals the real reason for the Egyptian's supreme adoration of the feline. And cat's have been riding on this superstardom for too long!
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