Have I Been Asleep At The Switch Long Enough???
Time for the Nut Case Doctor to get back into gear. My kids often called me a nut case when they were growing up...guess they were correct. Check back. No more sleeping at the switch.
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April 2010 Archives
April 3, 2010
April 4, 2010
World War II and the Game of Monopoly
Beginning in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen were becoming involuntary guests of the Third Reich. The Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape. Obviously, one of the most helpful aids to an escape would be a useful and accurate map, one showing the locations of 'safe houses' where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.
You will never look at Monopoly the same again!
Paper maps had some real drawbacks: They make a lot of noise when opened and folded, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they become useless. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's OSS ) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever. At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.
By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, 'games and pastimes' was a category of item qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war. Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located. When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.
As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also managed to add:
1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass
2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together
3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!
British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a 'rigged' Monopoly set -- by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.
Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets.. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war.
The story wasn't declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.
It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail' Free' card!
April 29, 2010
The Economy According Maxine
This basically says it all...
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