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CIA Shares Julia Child's Shark Repellent Recipe
coondoggie writes: Sometimes some of the coolest stories get lost in history. The CIA recently noted one of them – famous French food chef and author Julia Child's critical involvement in developing a shark repellent recipe for military personnel during WWII. The CIA reports: "Julia McWilliams (better known by her married name, Julia Child) joined the newly-created OSS in 1942 in search of adventure. This was years before she became the culinary icon of French cuisine that she is known for today. In fact, at this time, Julia was self-admittedly a disaster in the kitchen. Perhaps all the more fitting that she soon found herself helping to develop a recipe that even a shark would refuse to eat....After trying over 100 different substances—including common poisons—the researchers found several promising possibilities: extracts from decayed shark meat, organic acids, and several copper salts, including copper sulphate and copper acetate. After a year of field tests, the most effective repellent was copper acetate."
Julia Childs was also a spy for allied forces. She placed herself in a position such that she cooked for an important German general and thus overheard conversations with meaningful information which was passed on to military intelligence. People often use the term CIA when mentioning Julia but I would think they should be saying OSS or perhaps the Brit's Special Executive Branch as the CIA did not exist at that time. Obviously the lady placed herself in harms way for the war effort. She was an unlikely heroin just as one can not quite picture Eddie Albert as a serious war hero in the Pacific. Even Audi Murphy was a tiny guy who one would not suspect as being our most decorated hero in WW2.