Monopoly

[great white]

Monopoly

You'll never look at the game the same way again!

Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the

Third Reich(as POWs), and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape...

 

Now, obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only

where stuff was, but also showing the locations of 'safe houses' where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.

 

Paper maps had some real drawbacks -- they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out

rapidly and, if they get wet, they turn into mush.

 

Someone in MI-5 got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can

be scrunched-up into tiny wads, can be 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 UK 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 regional system. 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; and

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 honoured in a public ceremony.

 

It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail Free' card!

 

[niggle]

Brilliant

[codpiece]

Superb !!! Derek.