The prototype of Ostap Bender was a poultry farming specialist... September 13, 1917. Ukraine, Odesa. At an agricultural exhibition, the public was introduced to a completely bald chicken. A representative of the local scientific community, a gray-haired professor named Bagirov, told the audience about a revolution in poultry farming. He claimed that cooks would no longer need to pluck feathers from birds. The company "Ideal Chicken" had signed contracts with the largest poultry farms. However, the professor and the company later disappeared. The police found only one chicken, which had a tag around its neck reading: "We, the Odesa breeders, have also created a chicken without a head and bones." The gray-haired professor Bagirov was, in fact, a 17-year-old Odesa resident named Osip Shor. After this scam, he proposed to the local rabbi, Berstein, to sell spots in heaven. A diagram of heaven with a price list was even hung on the synagogue wall. With the contributions from eager buyers, the rabbi restored the synagogue and his own house... Particularly noteworthy is Osip’s 10-month journey from St. Petersburg to Odesa without a penny to his name. To earn a living, he pretended to be a chess grandmaster, an artist, and a firefighter. Additionally, Osip married a stout woman who owned a shop. That’s how he survived the winter... Another chapter in Shor’s life was his work in the Odesa criminal investigation department. There, he became a leading investigator in the fight against banditry and confronted the gang of Mishka Yaponchik. Some time later, Osip moved to Moscow and shared his life story with writer Valentin Kataev. Kataev suggested that the little-known journalists Ilf and Petrov write a book about Shor. That’s how Ostap Bender was born.