Ice pick



An ice pick is a tool used to break up, pick at, or chip at ice. In shape it resembles a scratch awl for wood. Before modern refrigerators, ice picks were a ubiquitous household tool used for separating and shaping the blocks of ice used in iceboxes. Their role as a household item sharply declined during the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Use as weapon
Because of its availability and ability to puncture the skin easily, the ice pick has sometimes been used as a weapon. Most notoriously, New York's organized crime groups known as Murder Incorporated made extensive use of the ice pick as a weapon during the 1930s and 1940s. The most feared hitman of his day, Abe Reles, used the ice pick as his weapon of choice, usually stabbing his victims in the ear.

According to New York City police, ice picks are still used today as street weapons.

The Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky is sometimes incorrectly said to have been killed with an ice pick. He was actually murdered with an ice axe, a mountaineering tool.