Military surgeon Joseph Fleming served with the British Royal Navy aboard a hospital ship during conflicts in Africa. His notes from 1873 related a peculiar case, in which Captain H. V. B. suffered from some unknown illness, possibly gall bladder trouble, and died aboard the ship. An autopsy was inconclusive as to the exact cause of death, but it revealed a rather curious anomaly in his heart.
A small hard heavy circular body, about half-an-inch in diameter (which, on examination, proved to be a leaden bullet), is found encysted outside the pericardium, above the right ventricle and between the origin of the pulmonary artery in front and the ascending part of the arch of the aorta behind.
A really surprising place to find a bullet: less than an inch from the heart, and sitting snugly between the two largest blood vessels in the body. Miraculously, it had not damaged any of these delicate structures. By chance, another of the surgeons on board HMS Victor Emmanuel knew how it had happened, since he witnessed the injury – which had occurred thirteen years earlier and on the other side of the globe.
The captain had indeed been shot all those years ago, but since it didn't seem to bother him much, he had been quickly discharged from medical care. Read the story of the heart with a bullet at Thomas Morris. -via Strange Company