Spy Summer in the City of Brotherly Love... Franklin would have loved it!

PA - "Spy: The Secret World of Espionage," at the Franklin Institute through Oct. 6, takes a declassified look into the reality of this intoxicating world, with a display of more than 200 artifacts used by real spies that underscore the real dangers they faced.

Drawn from the immense private collection of intelligence historian H. Keith Melton and the collections of the CIA, the FBI and the National Reconnaissance Office is everything from a KGB poison dart-firing umbrella to the fake movie script that enabled the rescue of the diplomats from Iran.

 
The show is a touring exhibit that opened at Times Square New York last year and now travels to 10 science museums around the United States for the next five years.

While younger visitors might pass on the show's informative wall text, they can't help but love the spy cameras, tear-gas pens, shoes with hidden compartments, a coin with a poison needle hidden inside and even a hollow molar the East German secret police created to conceal a microdot in a spy's mouth.

This is definitely a kid-friendly show, with interactive displays aplenty. (more)