I Love Learning Something New

Most mornings I check snopes.com's "what's new". I love snopes. They examine all the crap that wanders into email inboxes and internet hoaxes. More than once, they've brought a phishing scheme to my attention, including one I nearly fell for.

When I get a warning or a story that seems hard to believe, a surprisingly large percentage of the time I've found the truth on their site. I never forward anything without checking there first (though, in truth, I rarely forward anything anyway, but that's another story). I love that they include their source material so you can see for yourself. I still remember a frenzied story about a report that said women caused more fires from static electricity at gas stations because of their pantyhose and cell phones. They read the report and noted that gender wasn't mentioned at all, nor were cell phones implicated. At work, safety officials were passing around the story (with the link) as if it were true. Guess who didn't read the report (I did - snopes.com was right.)?

Anyway, I like snopes.

Today, I like snopes even better because I learned something new to me. Apparently, some clever Brits managed to smuggle money, maps and more to the WWII British POWs in monopoly games. The maps were silk screened on to silk so they could fit in small spaces and didn't rustle when opened. The boards were hollowed out and slim compasses, maps and tools were slid into place. The Monopoly fake money would hide a stack of real money pertinent to the area. The maps were made specific to the area pertinent to particular POW camps.

I found that too cool for words.

Since board games were acceptable as care package fodder and, by a coincidence, the company that perfected silk-screening happened also to be the company authorized to make Monopoly for Great Britain, the idea took off.

I love learning new things, don't you? (And if you already knew, and I'm sure some of you did, what can I say? I didn't.)

Read more...