Sands of violence/death disappearing into time

[packman]

It turns out that the fighting on D-Day was so fierce that as much as 4% of the sand on Normandy beaches is magnetic shrapnel that has been broken down over the decades into sand-sized chunks.

From BLDGBLOG, a paper in the upcoming issue of Archeology finds that the spherical metal shards are a significant portion of the beach's composition.

In the photo (above) , see the smooth sphere? It's got a diameter of around one-tenth of a millimeter judging by the legend. That's sixty-year-old shrapnel, sanded down to a smooth, microscopic ball.

In another 150 years it is estimated that all the shrapnel will be rusted into the sand and disappear- poignant in its inevitability.



https://www.businessinsider.com/d-day-fighting-was-so-heavy-that-4-of-normandy-sand-is-still-shrapnel-2012-8?utm_source=reddit.com

[Aristus]

1. Micro- and macro-, WWII is going to be with us for a long time, yet.

They're still pulling old Russian and German tanks and self-propelled guns out of swamps all over Russia and Eastern Europe. The global industrial output for warfare between roughly 1936 and 1945 beggars description.