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May 15, 2025

Covert Tools of Espionage Masters

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[In 1965, a U.S. checkpoint in West Berlin uncovered a discreet and lethal tool: a KGB-issued single-shot weapon camouflaged as a tube of lipstick.]

I clicked on this Rare Historical Photos link thinking it would consist of things I've seen and heard of previously.

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[The CIA equipped some operatives with eyeglasses designed to hide a cyanide pill within their frame. In the event of capture, agents could discreetly chew on the end of the glasses to take their own lives. This grim innovation allowed operatives to maintain control over their fates, even under the most extreme circumstances.]

Boy, was I wrong.

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[This CIA-designed gun could fire a dart containing frozen shellfish toxin, which dissolved quickly upon entry into the body. The result was a nearly undetectable death, mimicking a heart attack. It was silent and accurate up to 100 meters.]

I'd not previously known of around 2/3 of the pictured weapons and gadgets.

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[Developed in the late 1960s, the T-1151 transmitter was cleverly disguised as animal feces to evade detection. This homing device, nicknamed "monkey turds" by those who used it, was designed for field agents who needed to signal their location for rescue or extraction. Its unassuming appearance made it an effective tool in high-stakes operations.]

It's likely what's shown here is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg of things we'll never see or know exist..

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[The Sedgley OSS .38 Glove Pistol was a concealed weapon integrated into a glove, featuring a single-shot .38 caliber pistol.]

The CIA has a museum which is only open to people invited by past or present members of the agency.

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[This ingenious letter remover device was created to extract letters from envelopes without breaking their seals. Its pincer-like head would carefully slide into the envelope, enabling the letter to be wound up and removed without leaving a trace of tampering.]

You could look it up.

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[A single-shot miniature gun was concealed inside this pipe, offering a discreet self-defense tool for agents in critical situations.]

May 15, 2025 at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dolní Vĕstonice Head: The oldest known human portrait in the world

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[A portrait of a Stone Age woman carved out of mammoth ivory.]

From LiveScience

This sculpture, discovered at the archaeological site of Dolní Vĕstonice in the Czech Republic in the 1920s, is considered the oldest surviving portrait of a person anywhere in the world, at 26,000 years old.

It was made about 24,000 B.C.

Carved with stone tools out of mammoth ivory, the tiny head measures just 1.9 inches (4.8 centimeters) tall and 1 inch (2.4 cm) wide.

The sculpture appears to represent a woman's face, with engraved eyes, a dimpled chin, and a raised nose and mouth.

She may be wearing her hair in an updo or under a hat.

Unlike other objects from the site — such as the Venus of Vĕstonice, which lacks facial features — this face seems to be individualized, making it the earliest known depiction of a specific person.

During the Upper Paleolithic period, a band of mammoth hunters set up camp at Dolní Vĕstonice, which is now a small village near the southern border of the Czech Republic.

This cluster of settlements, sometimes called the "Stone Age Pompeii," has yielded tens of thousands of ceramics, stone tools, and bone objects over the past century of excavations, along with numerous burials.

In one of these burials, covered in red ocher and arrayed with 10 drilled fox teeth, excavators discovered the skeleton of a middle-aged woman in 1949.

Her skull was asymmetrical, potentially due to a traumatic childhood injury.

When researchers used forensic techniques to reconstruct the woman's face from the skull in 2018, they discovered it was very similar to the tiny ivory carving, whose left eye is significantly smaller than the right.

Dolní Vĕstonice is unique in Europe for its abundant artifacts dating to the Late Gravettian period (29,000 to 24,000 B.C.), including some of the earliest kiln-fired pottery in the world, so it is unsurprising that this little head carved from mammoth ivory is likely the earliest personal portrait in the world.

Many artifacts from Dolní Vĕstonice, including this sculpted head, can be found on display at the Anthropos Pavilion, a museum in Brno, Czech Republic.

Below,

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a reconstruction of the Dolní Vĕstonice head using modern technology.

May 15, 2025 at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monk Eraser

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From the website:

This creative eraser was designed by Ishikawa Kazuya.

The fun eraser features a monk who balds as you use the eraser.

The more you use the eraser, the more bald the monk becomes.

Dimensions: 16mm x 16mm x 64mm.

$7.89.

Constant readers may recognize the name Ishikawa Kazuya: he also created the Japanese salaryman eraser featured here earlier this year.

May 15, 2025 at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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