6 Insane Stories of a Magician Who Helped Win WWII | Part 2

#5.

 

James Bond Gadgets for Prisoners of War

Regardless, everyone seems to agree that this part is true:

In 1939, the British military established MI9, a unit of intelligence agents devoted to aiding resistance fighters and freeing captured prisoners of war. Getting key equipment inside hostile prison camps took some high-end trickery, and Jasper Maskelyne was one of the key advisers in that department.


Maskelyne, showing off his combination cigarette/entrenching tool.

Nazi prison camps, it turned out, had to obey a few rules of the Geneva Conventions to maintain their good standing in the "Fair and Humanitarian Nations (Except for the One Part About the Holocaust) Club." And one of those rules was allowing care packages for prisoners from humanitarian groups, a fact that MI9 exploited mightily.

Even the Nazis from Hogan's Heroes would get suspicious if they started mailing saw-shaped packages to prisoners, so Maskelyne and his buddies created a number of clever, James Bond-esque contraptions such as playing cards that contained maps of the surrounding area and cricket bats where the handle contained a concealed saw, while the blade of the bat could be used as a shovel.


This baseball glove was actually an ingeniously concealed jackhammer.

Other trickery included shoelaces embedded with wire that could saw through bars, and they supposedly even embedded a map inside a gramophone record that the prisoners would never have found if somebody hadn't accidentally broken it. Another nifty plan was to send board games that contained real local currency, ensuring probably the most impassioned games of Monopoly in human history.


"Go directly to the firing squad. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 reichsmarks."

The MI9 team wound up getting more than 1,600 spy gadget care packages into German POW camps, slipping them right by the guards thanks to Maskelyne's trickery. But Maskelyne was thinking bigger...

To be continued...

6 Insane Stories of a Magician Who Helped Win WWII | Part 1

How's this for a disclaimer: Much of what follows might be complete nonsense.

No one knows for sure.

Every now and then, we come across a man so epic, so larger-than-life, so PIMPTACULAR, that our sense of admiration compels us to tell his story. Jasper Maskelyne -- the magician who used his skills to fight Hitler -- was such a man, and then some. Or at least that's what the stories claim. Some of what's below has been confirmed as true; some of it is just too insane to be real. All of it was top secret.

That means that the world has to rely on Maskelyne's own retelling of his exploits and, you know, the guy was a goddamned magician. Illusion and self-promotion were his business. For that reason, his legend has grown over the decades. But if even half of this is real ... holy sh*t.

It all supposedly started with ...

#6.

 

The Balloon Battleship Illusion

Here's the part that is true:

Jasper Maskelyne was a third-generation magician who volunteered his services to the Royal Engineers when World War II broke out. He hated Hitler as much as the next guy, so why shouldn't he get to employ his unique illusionist skills in taking the Nazis down? OK, so it's hard to imagine what a magician would have to offer -- pulling a rabbit out of a top hat while wearing a flamboyant sequined jumpsuit only makes the enemy want to kill you more.


But, despite the idea being seemingly too silly for even a Saturday-morning cartoon, the Allies agreed. Not only did Maskelyne got promoted to major, he got an entire unit made up of handpicked artists, magicians, carpenters, electricians and criminals called the A-Force, aka The Magic Gang.

The A-Force's mission was to use magic to trick Axis forces. Correction: to use illusions to trick Axis forces.

As exciting as it must sound to have a real-life magician working on your behalf, the brass in charge weren't exactly keen on employing Maskelyne's unusual skill set. When he first enlisted, he was used as a freakin' troop entertainer, like some kind of Bob Hope. Somehow, being a glorified carny was not what Maskelyne had in mind when he enlisted. Just look at him. Clearly, this was a man who didn't have time for malarkey.

The solution, as the story goes, was simple. And by "simple," we mean "cartoonish and insane." To convince the higher-ups that they could use an illusionist on the battlefield, he would float a fake but realistic version of the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee down the Thames. Just so we're clear, this wasn't a little tugboat that Maskelyne whipped together in his backyard. The Graf Spee was a 610-foot long juggernaut that had been scuttled the year before. So when Maskelyne created the illusion of the floating ship using a small balloon model and mirrors, his superiors were duly impressed. Because as much as the Allied forces wanted to defeat Hitler with their massive armament, what they really wanted to do was not have to fight Hitler because of their massive armament. A guy like Jasper Maskelyne could probably do some damage in that department.

Now, here is where we have to note that there are no surviving photographs of this balloon battleship (to be fair, there wouldn't necessarily be any even if it were true), so there are people who doubt that the illusion was actually pulled off. If not, whatever he did do persuaded the higher-ups to let him take his act to the battlefield. In other words, the man either showed them some mind-blowing magic or gave them an equally impressive line of nonsense.

To be continued...

Famous people about Magic

Hey guys,

A majority of people relates magic to trickery and purely to sleight of hand. I believe that there is a bit more to that. This is the experience that it provides, the memory that it will create and that will make you happy :) The astonishment...Do you remember your childhood? The strange things like planes - the metal object that is just there, in the sky...Glue? Kind of strange liquid...if you put in on fingers and hold for a second...cannot take them apart! :)

Also, I would like to share with you some famous peoples point of view towards magical. It is interesting and pleasant to what magic is related to :)

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead."

- Albert Einstein


“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” 

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.”

“Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef”

“Logic only gives man what he needs...Magic gives him what he wants.”

-  Tom Robbins

“The power of Thought, the magic of the Mind!”

-  Lord Byron

“The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.”

- Ben Okri

“Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches”

-  Logan Pearsall Smith

"The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk from the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate peace and beauty that are available now... We need only to find ways to bring our body and mind back to the present moment so we can touch that which is refreshing, healing, and wondrous."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

"Art is a sense of magic."

- Stan Brakhage

Hope you enjoyed :)

See you soon,

Tomas

Five career fields that mesh with magic PERFECTLY

Not everyone gets to have an entire career dedicated to magic. Most magicians have their day jobs as well as their performance careers. And that’s a good thing, because some career fields mesh PERFECTLY with magic.

Of course, we’d argue that learning sleight of hand makes someone a better all-around person, and that applies to whatever career they’ve chosen. But it’s almost spooky how perfectly aligned some fields are with magic.

Maybe you’re still in school and haven’t picked a career path yet. Or maybe you’re ready for a new field. Whatever the case may be, check out our top five careers that match magic to a T:

SECURITY

Your demand from casinos should be obvious enough. Your knowledge of sleights and cheats will help you spot cheaters from a mile away, and what casino doesn’t want that? But even a simple security job is perfectly suited for a magician’s observant nature. We pick up on little things that most people miss. We have hawk eyes for things out of the ordinary. And as much as we know how to stand out, we also know how to blend in.

SALES

But not in a lying, misdirecting sort of way: We know how to make an interactive presentation. Unlike a typical theater guy reading lines and making moves according to a rehearsed plan, magicians have built-in flexibility and organic scripts. And magicians are skilled at improv. We listen to people and involve them, show them how what is being sold will really help them out.

SCIENTIST

Magicians love to tinker, learn and explore. We love making new discoveries and sharing them with each other (if you’ve ever watched magicians at a conference or meetup, you know exactly what we mean). And we know how to make the most of our time standing on the shoulders of giants. Our love of research and sense of adventure make us natural-born scientists.

JOURNALISM

When you think about it, you could argue that politicians have the makings to be magicians: They like to present a great package to their citizens without showing the dirty details. But it’s the journalists who really capture the spirit of the magician. Their skeptical nature leads them to ask questions and accept no B.S. And, like Houdini, James Randi and other debunkers, they are more than willing to expose frauds.

PHOTOGRAPHER

Heck, thanks to digital video and how absolutely essential a good demo video is for our magic careers, we all have to learn how to take a good picture or make a good video. We can think of plenty of up and coming magicians who have learned how to shoot their own videos. And they are getting bookings from top names and TV shows from simple YouTube videos. It makes perfect sense to put those behind-the-lens skills to work.

Source: Ellusionist.com

Starting a Blog

Hey guys,

I thought that I should start posting regularly something related to magic and unusual stuff. I believe that majority of people are fascinated by that. So hope you enjoy that :)

See you soon,

Tomas