For my birthday, Renay bought me a book called “Albuquerque, a guide to the weird, wonderful and obscure”. What better tool for a geocacher!!!
This book is full of strange and super cool interesting places and history about Albuquerque. Many places already have caches nearby but I’ve learned a ton of things about our city and have set up a dozen caches to teach and entertain.
I can’t thank the author enough, Ashley Biggers, for all the great research and information about this treasure we call Albuquerque!
Have fun!!!!
Once again, Albuquerque is the hub of espionage and intrigue! At the age of 18, Theodore Hall was a physics student from Harvard University who began working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. Yes…the same project that that had Soviet spying having taken place at “The Spy House” GC9D258!
Hall was analyzing if weapons-grade plutonium could be used on a gun-type bomb design. In October of 1944 Hall contacted the KGB and volunteered to be a spy. He was given the code name “MLLAD”. Hall met with KGB contact Lona Cohen, code name “Leslie” in May of 1945 on the UNM campus. Hall reported America would have enough weapon grade plutonium for a bomb by August or September of 1945.
On August 5th, 1945 “MLLAD” met with “Leslie” at this main entrance to UNM and wandered the campus to exchange information regarding the successful test of the atomic bomb at the Trinity Site. This meeting occurred 1 day prior to the bombing of Hiroshima Japan.
The first unbelievable part? Hall was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946 having never been discovered!
Then….in 1986 Hall returned to UNM to speak at a conference….again without anyone knowing about his past even though in 1950 Project Venona decrypted Soviet transmissions and identified Hall as a spy!