The London Eye and Waterloo Pier were evacuated after an unexploded World War Two bomb was discovered on the banks of the Thames.
The shell, which was later found to be an empty casing and therefore not immediately dangerous, was spotted by a member of the public sticking out of the sand on the banks of the river on Sunday morning.
They immediately reported it to the police, who cordoned off the whole area, resulting in the closure of the London Eye. Authorities moved tourists away from the vicinity of the device, while local residents were advised that further evacuations of neighbouring apartment blocks may be required if live weaponry was found in the shell.
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: "Police were called at 10:30hrs on Sunday, 25 June, by a member of the public reporting suspected WW1 or WW2 ordnance in the foreshore on the River Thames near to the London Eye."
Police later removed the suspect device using bomb disposal experts and a flotilla of police boats.
London was hit by an estimated 30,000 tonnes of bombs during the Second World War, many of which failed to exploded and are semi-regularly found dotting the capital even 70 years after the end of the conflict.
There is a dedicated Army bomb squad, trained in the safe removal of unexploded ordnance, ready to be brought in when a World War Two device is found.
Bombs often weigh well over 100kg and can measure over a metre in length. As the bombs were dropped from great heights and weighed considerable amounts, those that did not explode are often buried large distances underground. They are most regularly discovered in building excavations.
They are an even more regular occurrence in Germany. Approximately 2.7m tonnes of ordnance were dropped on the country by the British, Americans, French and Soviets during the Second World War and more than 2,000 tonnes of unexploded bombs are discovered on average every year.
Three bomb disposal experts were killed in 2010 by a World War Two device in Gottingen, while 45,000 people were evacuated from the centre of Koblenz in 2011 when a 1.8 tonne bomb was found in the Rhine river that had the potential to destroy the entire city centre.
In 2012, a 250kg bomb was found in Munich that was deemed too large to move safely and thus was detonated, resulting in a huge explosion and several shattered windows.
More recently, in 2013, a Soviet bomb was found just two metres from the tracks of Berlin's main train station during the construction of a new underground line, resulting the closure of the whole station.
Sources: Evening Standard, Independent, BBC, Der Spiegel, CNN, The Guardian
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