TSA officers got quite the surprise at Alabama’s Gulf Shores International Airport (JKA) when they discovered a passenger trying to carry “a stolen historic relic” in their checked luggage — Civil War-era cannonballs wrapped in paper towels.

Lead TSA Officer Justin Dupree thought he was looking at medicine balls on his X-ray screen when a bag passing through the machine prompted an alarm sound, TSA said in a release.

Instead, he discovered five small inert cannonballs of varying sizes, wrapped in paper towels inside the bag. They had been stolen from Fort Morgan, and the largest were about the size of a grapefruit, TSA said.

“My first thought was, ‘I couldn’t see a fuse and need to get some help quick,’” Dupree said, according to the release. “I couldn’t see the entire item but was scared I might have been holding a live explosive.”

Dupree, a TSA officer for four years, said he’d “never seen anything quite this unique.”

“I’ve seen inert grenades and training munitions but never an Indiana Jones-esque stolen artifact-type situation,” he said.

A supervisor joined Dupree to review the images and the bag, and agreed they had “a potentially dangerous item,” said Supervisory TSA Officer Richard Cash. He had Dupree stay with the bag and the cannonballs while he notified the region’s TSA explosives specialist and assistant federal security director-law enforcement.

Officers were instructed to call local police to determine whether a bomb squad was necessary, and the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office responded.

“I had never seen anything like this,” Cash said. “It was my first time dealing with a potentially live explosive, and it’s actually only the second incident we’ve had since JKA opened in May 2025.”

The cannonballs turned out not to be live explosives, TSA said. They were inert with no explosive material or active components. Still, TSA couldn’t allow the traveler to bring them on the plane.

“Technically, they were artillery munitions and considered prohibited items,” Cash said. “Because we were unable to initially determine they were inert, they could have been dangerous to the aircraft.”

Police investigated and found the cannonballs had been stolen from Fort Morgan in Alabama, a site that TSA said “played a significant role in several military conflicts, most notably the Civil War.”

The passenger told police they weren’t sure how the cannonballs ended up in their possession. The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office returned them to Fort Morgan.