The Boston Globe gets a look at a DB of every bomb the US has ever dropped

"One particularly relevant example: From October 1965 to May 1975, at least 456,365 cluster bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, according to the records analyzed. Cluster munitions, designed to release small bomblets, often did not explode on impact and still pose a hazard to villagers."

Apparently Laos is the most bombed country in the world:

"During the Vietnam War, Laos was the target of the heaviest US bombing campaign since World War II, making Laos the most bombed country in history."[1]

I believe the story is that US B52 bombers would take off out of Thailand to drop their load on Vietnam targets. However, if they bypassed their target they were not allowed to dispose of their load on Vietnam terriroty. Since the bombers can't land with their load on board it has to be disposed of before landing. Apparently Laos was the place of choice. [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Harvest

[2] http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bombies-the-secret-war/

It is worth pointing out that the article never claims that the database contains information on every bomb the US has ever dropped. The article clearly states that more information is needed, eg:

    "For the Korean War Robertson found the detailed mission records for the 
    first 10 months of the three-year conflict but he is still trying to 
    get his hands on the rest."

"The database, he said, has recently been used to investigate civilian deaths in Afghanistan and to judge claims by Iraqi villagers that bombs containing depleted uranium contaminated their water supply."

Wait, how about we have a "hackathon" to figure out ways to stops those bombs from being dropped in the first place! That would be totes awesome!

   He worked nights and weekends finding out. 
   Robertson unearthed 1,000 original World War I 
   raid reports, and entered each by hand. For World War II,
   he scanned roughly 10,000 hand-written or typed pages.
   More modern conflicts meant combing a hodgepodge of
   conflict-specific databases.

This is the kind of thing I wish they [the Pentagon] would open up to hackathons. How many hours of this valuable historian's time was wasted doing manual entry, something that could've been expedited with some mTurk + OCR work? Not all civic data projects draw attention, but this one at least has the cachet of notable history, worldwide good (to help identify areas of possible unexploded unordinance) and, of course, things that go boom.