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WWII bomb detonated in Germany, shakes countryside like earthquake

People living in Germany were shaken awake by what felt like an earthquake, but was, in reality, believed to be unexploded ordnance left over from World War II.

Police inspected what was left behind after the explosion --  a crater 33 feet wide and 13 feet deep, CNN reported.

It happened in the town of Limburg, the BBC reported.

At first, those tasked with finding out what happened didn’t think it was a World War II artifact but then said the evidence is pointing them in that direction.

Specifically, experts believe the bomb was a 550-pound explosive device dropped by a plane decades ago, according to the BBC.

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"With the former railway depot, we were quite a bomb target at the end of the Second World War," Ahlbach spokesperson Johannes Laubach told Hessenschau, according to CNN. "We can be glad that the farmer was not in the field."

Hundreds of unexploded bombs are found in Germany and in other areas.

One was found last April in Berlin and diffused, and another was found in September in Frankfurt and forced 60,000 people to be evacuated as crews worked to make it inert. In Hanover, 50,000 people were evacuated when other bombs were found before a construction project was started, CNN reported.

So, what caused the most recently discovered bomb to go off?

Experts say detonators can decompose over the years and can go off by themselves because of it, BBC reported, but the chance of it actually blowing up near someone, according to local officials, is less than being hit by lightning.