With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Stalin 'used secret laboratory to analyse Mao's excrement'

Related Link Analysis of this news story in The Conversation 

By the sound of things, it was a top secret and rather smelly experiment. 

According to Russian newspaper reports, in the 1940s Stalin's secret police had set up a special department to get its hands on people's faeces. 

The ambitious aim: to analyse samples of foreign leaders' stools. 

In other words, espionage via excrement.

Read entire article at BBC