Deadly relic of the Great War

Abstract

The curator of a police museum in Trondheim, Norway, recently discovered in his archive collection a glass bottle containing two irregularly shaped sugar lumps. A small hole had been bored into each of these lumps and a glass capillary tube, sealed at its tip, was embedded in one of the lumps (Fig. 1). A note attached to the exhibit translated as follows: “A piece of sugar containing anthrax bacilli, found in the luggage of Baron Otto Karl von Rosen, when he was apprehended in Karasjok in January 1917, suspected of espionage and sabotage”.