What Steve Martin thought was a harmless paperweight piece sitting on his office desk for years turned out to be a live Civil War-era explosive. Martin immediately contacted the Atascosa County Sheriff’s Office, which requested assistance from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team from Lackland Air Force Base. The Atascosa County Sheriff’s Office explained that they had never encountered an object like this. Atascosa County Sheriff’s Office“I thought it was really some sort of dummy,” Martin told KABB’s Destany Fuller. Bomb technicians confirmed the object was a Civil War-era Parrott round, an artillery shell designed by engineer Robert Parrott in the mid-1800s that was considered an active explosive.