Rats’ hollowed-out bodies also served as an effective dead drop for money, notes and other contraband being moved around Moscow.
Spies in Moscow in the 60s had a variety of “dead drops” they could use to secretly pass around notes and other contraband, including these hollow bricks.
Think you could be a spy? Try floating a one-man submarine into Singapore harbor and planting mines on Japanese ships in World War II. Not easy, but this submersible is cool.
Spies would use fake, exploding coal to sabotage supply lines — and this paint set to make the coal look real.
With these bad boys, you could even get away BEFORE the explosion.
Spies aren’t usually assassins. But some weapons, like this umbrella, have been used in the field. The assassination umbrella is equipped with a pellet of toxic ricin that will infect and kill its target slowly over the course of a few days. Its last known use was on Bulgarian defector and BBC reporter Georgi Markov in London, 1978.
In the 40s, spies were using cameras smaller than your smartphone!
If a CIA operative were caught, he could choose capture or death by this pin. When twisted the right way, the silver dollar would unleash a pin coated in saxitoxin. Its user would die in seconds from the poison.
And they all fit in this handy dandy sheath.
The OSS designed the Beano grenade to feel like a baseball and explode on impact — rather than bouncing away from its target and blowing up elsewhere.