The Clockmaker

It was the middle of a cool September night in Munich, Germany. The
year was 1939. In an otherwise unoccupied auditorium, a man knelt
on hands and knees chiseling a square hole into a large stone
pillar. The lights were out, but a small flashlight dimmed with a
handkerchief provided a pallid puddle of light. The man's chisel
was also wrapped in cloth to quiet his hammer strikes. Whenever
there was some unexpected sound, he froze. Whenever a truck rumbled
past the building, he seized the opportunity to chisel more
vigorously. It was exceedingly tedious and slow work. The fellow
was a 36-year-old German handyman named "Georg Elser". But
"handyman" isn't exactly the right word. In his three and a half
decades he had cultivated many skills, including clock making,
cabinet building, master carpentry, and stone quarrying. And the
task at hand required all of his diverse expertise.