Icepick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An icepick is a tool used to break-up, pick, or chip at ice. It resembles a scratch awl, but is designed for picking at ice rather than wood. Before the invention of modern refrigerators, ice picks were a ubiquitous household tool used for separating and shaping the blocks of ice used in ice boxes.
[edit] Other uses
Like most other tools, icepicks have been used for more than their intended use. For example, mafia hitman Abe "Kid Twist" Reles used an icepick as his weapon of choice. Fellow Murder, Inc. hitman Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss also employed an icepick as a tool of his trade.
Alternately, psychiatrist Walter Freeman used icepicks in what have been termed "icepick lobotomies," also known as a transorbital lobotomy, effectively hammering an icepick into the patient's brain with a rubber mallet via the eye's tear duct. He later developed the orbitoclast to replace the icepick.
Although the murder weapon in the assassination of Leon Trotsky was an ice axe, it is often described as an ice pick[1].
[edit] References
- ^ See Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN 0195071328, p.418 for a detailed account
