Spy novels, conspiracy magazines, and science fiction movies have exposed us to the power of truth serums. These elixirs allow everything from state secrets to the location of valued assets to pour out of their subjects. The real power of these truth drugs varies greatly, and their purported uses are numbered. What truth is really behind this class of drugs?

Often associated with the Devil himself, most people would struggle to think of something positive Hitler contributed to society. Nevertheless, Nazi Germany did have its slight upsides even if for maligned reasons; particularly when it came to its anti-smoking campaign, which was the world's first. The reasoning behind it however fell to a combination of Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco and his concern for its negative impact on reproduction when consumed by "Aryan" women.

Grace Fryer, a worker for US Radium Corporation, and her co-workers didn't understand the dangers of the radium paint they worked with everyday, and if anything, enjoyed its peculiarities. The all female painting department at US Radium played around with this radium paint, known as Undark. The girls painted their nails, and even their teeth, and enjoyed the reactions of their friends when the lights went out.

In the late nineteenth century, society had a heightened interested in animal intelligence spurred on by Charles Darwin's then recent writings. A German man by the name of William Von Osten took particular interest. Von Osten subscribed to the school of thought that the human race greatly underestimated the inherent intelligence of animals. To test his hypothesis, Von Osten conducted experiments on a bear, several cats, and finally a horse.