Farmers here in Illinois have to deal with the weather, pests, market prices, and more to get their very tough jobs done. In Germany, you can add "unexploded ordinance" to the mix.

Residents of Ahlbach, Germany, were, for the most part, asleep at about 4am Sunday when they were jolted out of bed by a huge explosion.

Something big seemed to have happened, large enough to feel like an earthquake, and a massive crater in a cornfield was all that remained.

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Getty Images
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Police were sent to inspect the hole, which measured 33 feet wide and 13 feet deep, they said.

So, what was with the unwelcome wake-up call?

Some residents correctly assumed it was a left-over bomb from World War II, and while it took a bit of time to investigate, officials ended up in agreement.

They figure it was a 500-pound "dud."

AFP, Getty Images
AFP, Getty Images
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"With the former railway depot, we were quite a bomb target at the end of the Second World War," city spokesman Johannes Laubach told the German news website Hessenschau. "We can be glad that the farmer was not in the field."
Undiscovered bombs can often explode without outside forces acting on them, experts say, as their detonators decompose over time. Old bombs are not uncommon finds in Germany and elsewhere, with hundreds found each year.
Police defused an unexploded World War II bomb weighing 1,100 pounds in Berlin in April 2018, CNN reported at the time.
In September, a 3,000-pound bomb discovered in Frankfurt caused nearly 60,000 people to be evacuated while experts defused it.
In May, more than 50,000 people were evacuated from Hanover after bombs were discovered during pre-construction work.

In fact, it happens more than you might think:

Illinois farmers have a lot to deal with, but thankfully, this is not one of those things.

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