Welcome to Erin Mankie's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm

and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

World War II saw the use of numerous deception tactics from both sides.

For example, British forces used playing cards that peeled away to reveal escape maps.

They also hid pistols in everyday objects like pens and smoking pipes while hiding knives

in things like pencils.

And of course, there were coded messages, falsified communiques, and countless other methods

for fooling the enemy overseas.

But back home in the United States, things were trickier.

Everyone knows about the rubber and scrap drives to collect the necessary material for building

planes and other supplies, while war bond sales helped finance operations in the first

place.

But when it came to building the planes themselves, America needed to keep things on the

down low, far from the prime eyes of the enemy.

And to do that, they constructed the aircraft in Seattle, Washington.

Now Seattle is situated on the Puget Sound, an estuary leading out into the Pacific Ocean.

It's not exactly safe from battleships, submarines, or fighter planes, but that was where aerospace

corporation Boeing had set up shop in 1906.

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