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The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception

In 1953, the fledgling CIA hired professional magician John Mulholland to adapt his techniques of stealth and misdirection to the craft of espionage. Mulholland produced two illustrated manuals featuring a range of tricks from placing pills into drinks to stealing documents and avoiding detection. The classified manuals were believed to have been destroyed in 1973, but the authors discovered a copy in 2007 among recently declassified CIA archives.

The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute

The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute was a political demonstration conducted by African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their medal ceremony. After having won gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter running event, they turned on the podium to face their flags. Each athlete raised a black-gloved fist, and kept them raised until the anthem had finished.

Telharmonium

Often recognized as the world’s first electronic musical instrument, the Telharmonium was a large organ-like device that used tonewheels to creative synthetic musical notes that were then transmitted by wires to a series of loudspeakers. The Telharmonium was developed by the inventor Thaddeus Cahill in 1897, and at the time it was one of the biggest instruments ever built.

Terracotta Army

Workers digging a well outside the city of Xi'an, China, in 1974 struck upon one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the world: a life-size clay soldier poised for battle. The diggers notified Chinese authorities, who dispatched government archaeologists to the site. They found not one, but thousands of clay soldiers, each with unique facial expressions and positioned according to rank.

The Skycycle

In Japan's Washuzan Highland amusement park, daredevils will find a roller coaster you pedal to control some 590 feet off of the ground.

The Cottingley Fairies

The Cottingley Fairies are a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins living in Cottingley, near Bradford in England, depicting the two in various activities with supposed fairies. In 1917, when the first two photos were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. In 1981 both women admitted that the photos were faked using cardboard cutouts. CGI has come a long way.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

People have been collecting—and stealing—books since even before Gutenberg invented the printing press. Internationally, according to Interpol, rare book theft is more widespread than fine art theft. In The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, Allison Hoover Bartlett takes us deep inside the world of rare books and tells the cat-and-mouse story of two men caught in its allure. She introduces us to John Gilkey, an unrepentant, obsessive book thief, and Ken Sanders, the equally obsessive self-styled “bibliodick,” a book-dealer turned amateur detective. While their goals are at direct odds, both men share a deep passion for books and a fierce determination—Gilkey, to steal books; Sanders, to stop him.

The Cane as a Weapon

The Cane as a Weapon is a book by Andrew Chase Cunningham presenting a concise system of self defense making use of a walking stick or umbrella. It was first published in 1912 in the United States of America.

Trap street

A trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential copyright violators of the map, who will be unable to justify the inclusion of the trap street on their map.

Tordenskjold

Tordenskjold is a Danish brand of matches.

Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

Tango