Nina Kulagina (
1925-
1990) was one of the most famous
Russian "
psychics", who made a career of moving tiny objects with her brain power.
She was born in
Leningrad and while still a teenager she fought against the
Germans during the brutal two and a half year siege of the city, serving in a
tank regiment and being wounded by artillery fire.
Thankfully, her wounds had no effect on her psychic powers, which she claims were inherited from her mother. She could move small objects like matchbooks and compass needles and read blindfolded, the usual unimpressive bag of stage magician tricks. In a now famous series of films, she performed her tricks for
parapsychologists. (There’s a broken link to them at http://www.psychicdiscoveries.com/pk.html, maybe they’ll fix it eventually.)
She sued the newspaper
Pravda when it called her a fraud, and she actually won because the court accepted the testimony of parapsychologists as valid scientific fact.