Half German island evacuated to bomb

helgoland - Half of the German island of Helgoland was evacuated on Thursday afternoon to allow the explosive removal service to make a 500 pound harmless. All residents of the high part of the island, about 800 people, had to precaution their house.

Helgoland is strategically advantageous in the German bend. The island was uninhabited at the end of World War II and was completely destroyed by the Allied bombings. Only a bunker for submarines and an underground corridor system remained relatively intact.

In order to make this fortunate work forever unusable, the British, who used the North Sea island in the post-war years as an aerospace aerodrome, acted as 'Big Bang'. They piled 4000 bursts of torpedo's, 9000 deep bombs and over 90,000 grenades in the labyrinth. On April 18, 1947, 6700 tons of explosives went into the air. It was at that time the largest non-nuclear explosion by human activity in world history.