Picture it. You've spent half the night digging up a fresh grave, you finally prise open the lid and the corpse you came to steal greets you with a face full of lead shot. That was the whole point of the coffin torpedo, a gadget designed to turn the dead into their own bodyguards.It sounds like something out of a cartoon, and in some ways it was. But it came out of a very real panic in 1870s America, and at least one newspaper swore it had blown a body snatcher to pieces.Quick Answers•      What