Weather rocket kills man and blows up his body at cremation

The body of Wang Diange, from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, was found in the wreckage of a house where he had been overseeing the wake of a previous family funeral, after mourners felt a loud explosion which took off half the roof. ... Inquiries revealed that the rainfall on the day of the original disaster was triggered by the local weather bureau, which had been firing shells into the atmosphere to break up hail in order to protect the local tobacco crop. Inside the shells were silver iodide, a chemical that helps to break up hail into rain. Their own investigators concluded that one shell must have failed to explode, hit the house, and lodged in Mr Wang's body. There it passed unnoticed because of his extensive injuries, according to local newspaper reports. [Courtesy of Chuck's News of the Weird Universe]