Tourist sparks bomb alert after accidentally ordering a 'grenade'

And other stories from the stranger side of life

A bar in Lisbon
The Cais do Sodré district (pictured here before the incident) is a popular area of the Portuguese capital
(Image credit: Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

A tourist triggered a bomb alert at a Lisbon restaurant when he mixed up the Portuguese words for "pomegranate" and "grenade" while trying to order a fruit juice. A language app gave the man from Azerbaijan the wrong word and he quickly found himself handcuffed and surrounded by armed police. His day got worse still when he was ordered to lie face down on the ground in the street as five officers immobilised him, then cuffed his hands. He was later released, reported The Telegraph.

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i news site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.

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