"Dear Fish, I wonder if you could do a drawing for me of an explosive slab of chocolate," begins a letter from Lord Victor Rothschild, a British intelligence officer in World War II. "We have received information that the enemy are using pound slabs of chocolate which are made of steel with a very thin covering of real chocolate. Inside there is high explosive and some form of delay mechanism."The letter, which was sent on May 4, 1943 to Laurence Fish, an illustrator, referenced a very real assassination plot by the Nazis. Their target: no less than the round mound of resolve, Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The chocolates were to be placed "amongst other luxury items in the War Cabinets dining room where Winston Churchill often hung out." But the plan was discovered by British spies and ahem foiled. This exploding-chocolate story has just come to light this week in the British papers, and it got me thinking. Could this be the most bizarre assassination technology? Surely not. So I went looking for some more.

via Exploding Chocolate, Poisoned Scuba Suits, & the Bulgarian Umbrella: A Survey of Strange Assassination Tech – Alexis Madrigal – The Atlantic.