The brief was simple: create an explosive device which is easy to carry and innocent in appearance. No sticks of dynamite, no ticking time-bombs. As part of an attempt to supply arms to the Chinese to aid resistance against the Japanese during WWII, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) developed an incendiary known as ‘Aunt [...]

Howard Hughes surely defined the word eccentric. One of the richest men in the world, he was famous for his maverick movie-making, addiction to drugs, and love of beautiful actresses. On one occasion, he became obsessed with designing a complicated cantilevered bra for one of the stars in his movie The Outlaw. He was also an accomplished aviator and innovative aircraft [...]

  Few weapons in this series have been sent back to the drawing board because of their efficiency. This page is usually occupied by a terrible concept doomed from the start or a wacky idea that might just have worked but for a crucial, disastrous oversight at the last minute. But for the Davy Crockett [...]

We and all nations have a sense that we have come to the turning-point of an age,’ said Adolf Hitler in a speech regarding the re-occupation of the Rhineland in 1936. Preparations for war were being made even as the horrors of the last war were still fresh in the mind. A storm was brewing. [...]

In 1965, when the latest Ian Fleming novel was published, the world once again marvelled at James Bond’s futuristic gadgets: the Solar Agitator, the Camera Rocket-Launcher, the Imitation Nipple. Yet the most enviable of the gadgets was surely the villain Scaramanga’s airborne AMC Matador, equipped with jet-engine and wings. But this was not the first [...]

Even as the Soviet Union’s terrified tank dogs were hiding from the Panzers, and just before B F Skinner’s poor pigeons were being made redundant, a new animal was emerging as a potentially more successful weapon. Dental surgeon Dr Lytle S Adams had just returned from a visit to the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico [...]