Pioneering African-American movie, directed by actor and film-maker Spencer Williams in 1941. Williams was best known for playing Andy, in the  Amos 'n' Andy TV show. The Blood of Jesus was produced by Williams' own production company,  Amnegro, on a $5,000 budget using non-professional actors for his cast. It was his directorial début, and was a major commercial success, being screened in cinemas and in black churches. It's considered as being one of the most successful "race films" of the period. Time magazine has listed it as one of the top 25 Most Important Films on Race.

The film tells the story of a woman accidentally shot by her husband. As she lays dying, an angel visits her to take her spirit on a journey to the after-life. She is brought to the Crossroads between Heaven and Hell, and initially she is tempted by the slick Judas, an agent of Satan. Eventually the angel arrives to save Martha from Satan, and she witnessed the crucified Christ on the cross. The blood of Christ falls on her face, and she is transported back home, where her godless husband has found Jesus.

Williams filmed and produced The Blood Of Jesus in Texas, for Sack Amusement Enterprises. It's success meant he was able to make two other religious themed films, Brother Martin: Servant of Jesus (1942) and Go Down Death (1944). For years, the film was considered a lost film until prints were discovered in the mid-1980s in a warehouse in Tyler, Texas. In 1991, The Blood of Jesus became the first race film to be added to the United States National Film Registry. 

Purported to be the world's first sex doll, is said to be the creation of Nazi scientists in 1941. Borghild, was a sex doll or "gynoid", developed as a "female hygiene project" to stop soldiers on the front having sex with prostitutes. It was believed that the project was developed by Himmler, and approved by Hitler, to give inflatable sex dolls to the troops, that they could carry in their back-packs. 

The project was pushed forward by an ambitious Danish doctor, called Hannussen. He wanted to create a doll with an ”artifial face of lust”, for the soldiers.

A total of fifty dolls were supposedly ordered for use in Jersey by officials, but the purported project was cancelled by Himmler after two years, after soldiers refused to carry them due to the fear of embarrassment if they were captured and one was found in their possession. The bombing of Dresden also supposedly destroyed the factories that were planned to build the dolls, as well as the records of the project.

After many years of investigation, with no evidence to support the story, many historians now consider that the Borghild Project is a hoax. However in 2009, a black comedy titled The Borghilde Project was released. Starring Jaye Davidson, the film presents the project as being factual.

Given away free with Kix cereal, the Atomic Bomb Ring contained actual degrading radioactive material. The instructions stated that "you'll see brilliant flashes of light in the inky darkness inside the atom chamber." Suggesting that to see the miracle of the atoms of polonium-alpha particles on a zinc sulphide screen, you took yourself off to a darkened room and put the atomic bomb ring to your eye. So that you could see the "frenzied flashes." inside the chamber.

Claiming that the Atomic Bomb Ring was PEEFECTLY SAFE, and that kids could wear the ring with "complete safety" may have been a bit of a naive statement from the manufacturers. Polonium-210, is a deadly element and its alpha particle emissions have a short have life of 138 days. However the silvery metal, found in uranium ore, and originally discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1897 is deadly. It was used to assissinate the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London, in 2006. A microgram of Po-210, which is no larger than a speck of dust, would certainly deliver a fatal dose of radiation. So for kids, who like to put things in their mouths, maybe this ring wasn't such a great idea.

In the 1940s the True Comics series of comic books presented educational information for kids in a pictorial format. As a backlash against racism, and in particular the racial superiority propaganda of the Nazis in WWII, humanist and publisher George J. Hecht produced a piece called There Are No Master Races! in issue #39 of the series, published in Sept-Oct 1944. Using references from the Bible, alongside both historical and scientific understanding he presented a strong anti-racist piece of propaganda to counter the Nazi claims. The latter panels directly mentioning the Japanese, Italians and Germans.

John Willie (born John Alexander Scott Coutts), artist, photographer, editor and publisher of the cult bondage magazine Bizarre. The first magazine for fetishists, it was first published in 1946. Originally only sold through mail order, it featured stunning illustrations by Coutts. He was known as the Rembrandt of Pulp and the Da Vinci of Fetish, but was born to British parents in Singapore, and grew-up up in the sexually repressed Edwardian era of England. Via Australia and Canada, good fortune landed him in the USA, where Willie found him home. and place for his artistic expression. Among themany  artwork and illustrations that he did for the magazine, the most famous character was Sweet Gwendoline, a naive blonde damsel in distress.

Bizarre magazine was published sporadically, ceasing production all together during 1947 to 1951, due to paper shortages during WWII. Coutts only published 26 editions before his death in 1962. It is thought that there were only around 10,000 of each made, making them a very collectable item today. 

In the magazine Coutts carefully played with gender roles, which was very progressive for its time. With women tying up women, it appealed to both a male and female readership.

From his work, it can be seen that Coutts loved and admired women. His female characters were always intelligent and witty, despite finding themselves tied-up. Whereas the male characters, like his villain Sir Dystic D'Arcy (based on Coutts himself) were portrayed as dim-witted.