BBC Fact of the Day 09/11/2010

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US State papers dating from 1994 released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, during the Gulf War, the Pentagon toyed with the idea of developing an aphrodisiac bomb that would cause enemy troops to find each other sexually irresistible. An alternative was to make enemy troops sexually attractive to stinging and biting insects and rodents. They also spent 50 years looking into a Who?Me? stink bomb that would produce smells leading enemy troops to think one of them had farted or suddenly developed bad breath.

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This is akin to something I heard many years ago that the CIA had the idea of "doctoring" sugar with thallium acetate then sending it to Fidel Castro. This was at the time of the Cuba fiasco.

Thallium is a toxic element and one of the effects of its toxicity is to cause hair to fall out. The Americans were working on the notion that if Castro suddenly appeared hairless, this would ruin his macho reputation and cause his downfall

What wasn't appreciated was that Cuba is itself a major producer of sugar so there was no point in Castro even sampling the American offering.

Another daft idea involving thallium was tried in New Zealand by feeding it to sheep. The notion being that the wool would fall out and save the animal the trauma of being sheared. It worked, yes, but there was no control on when or where the wool would fall out. In consequence, all of the freshly redundant sheep shearers (and more) had to be re-employed to collect up all the wool that was deposited at random over the vast areas of the country. Even worse, the wool didn't grow again so were a load of bald sheep wandering about NZ of no commercial value whatsoever. No wool and they couldn't be used for meat because of the toxicity of the thallium permanently deposited in the body.