Funeral went with a Bang

[five bellies]

Weather rockets are shot into the atmosphere in order to break up clouds -- either to protect crops or to simply improve the weather. Unfortunately, one of these rockets recently missed its target, causing anything but a sunny day in one Chinese town.

 

Inner Mongolia resident Wang Diange was killed after an explosion rocked the house where he was staying. It was raining, so authorities assumed the house had been struck by lightning. But the story took an even stranger turn a few days later when Wang's body exploded in a cremation chamber, blowing the doors off the unit.

 

No one could figure out why the blast had occurred, until one of the fragments was found afterward bearing a military serial number. It was determined to be part of a shell casing from -- you guessed it -- a weather rocket.

 

Turns out the weather bureau had been firing shells containing silver iodide in order to break up some hail that was forming in the sky. One unexploded shell plummeted to Earth and burst through Wang's house, killing him stone dead.

 

Now, three years after Mr Wang died, his family have received 80,000 yuan (£8,000) in compensation. A sad tale

 

 

Piched this of off AOL News,