History Facts About Military

The US Air Force researched a “Gay Bomb”: A non-lethal bomb containing really strong pheromones that will make the enemy forces attracted to each other. It won the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize.

During World War II, the company that would become Uncle Ben's supplied rice to the U.S. Armed Forces under a government contract—their parboiled rice was prized because it could be air-dropped to troops without weevil infestation and cooked faster than regular rice.

A homing pigeon shot through the breast with one leg hanging by a tendon flew 25 miles to save 194 men trapped behind enemy lines. The survivors carved him a wooden leg. He still stands at the Smithsonian today.

During the Cold War, the US had planned to detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon.

A stray puppy was smuggled onto a troopship in a coal bin in 1917. He served 18 months in the WWI trenches, warned his regiment of mustard gas attacks, located wounded men in No Man's Land, and bit a German spy's leg until soldiers arrived. He is the most decorated war dog of WWI and the only dog promoted to sergeant through combat. His body is at the Smithsonian.

In 1963, the US Military created an artificial ring around Earth, similar to that of the planet Saturn. The ring was made of copper needles and was used for worldwide communications in the case that the Soviets disabled all other methods of communication.

The first McDonald’s drive-thru was opened near a military base in Arizona “to serve soldiers who weren’t permitted to get out of their cars while wearing fatigues.”

A small group of retirees in Bangor, Maine has met every troop flight through the airport since 1991. It started with one homecoming during Desert Storm. Volunteers give each soldier a handshake, a cookie, and a free phone call home. Some flights land in the middle of the night. Someone is always there. More than a million troops have walked through that line. Thirty-five years on, they are still waiting at the gate.

During a war between France and England in 1697, Louis XIV ordered the release of a captured English engineer who had been building a lighthouse. His reasoning: "France is at war with England, not with humanity."

Sergeant Alvin York came home from World War I as a national hero. Hollywood wanted his story, and he said no for over 20 years. With only nine months of schooling himself, he raised money for a high school in his Tennessee mountain county and mortgaged his home twice to pay its teachers. A century after he broke ground, it still teaches the county's kids.

During World War II, dog lovers asked American families to lend their pets to the military. Owners signed up more than 40,000 dogs. Over 10,000 of them served as sentries, scouts and messengers. When the war ended, the military retrained the survivors to be family pets again. Many came home with honorable discharge papers.

In 1989, the Soviet Union traded Pepsi 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer in exchange for Pepsi products. For a brief moment, PepsiCo had the 6th largest submarine fleet in the world. Pepsi's CEO told the National Security Advisor: "We're disarming the Soviet Union faster than you are."

On September 26, 1983, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was alone at a nuclear command bunker when the early-warning system showed 5 American missiles inbound - confidence level: HIGHEST. Protocol demanded he report up the chain immediately. He decided the computer was wrong and reported a false alarm instead. The USSR reprimanded him for the paperwork.

The SR-71 Blackbird was built from titanium the CIA secretly bought from the Soviet Union - the very nation it was made to spy on. The airframe was 92% titanium, and the vast majority came from Soviet ore. The panels were fitted loose on purpose: on the tarmac the plane dripped fuel, and only Mach-3 friction heat expanded them tight. JP-7 fuel also doubled as a coolant, absorbing heat from the skin.

Eighteen thousand soldiers stood on a parade ground at Camp Dodge, Iowa in 1918 and became the Statue of Liberty when two photographers shot them from an 80 foot tower. 12,000 men filled the flame of the torch alone, while the whole body and head took only 2,000. Many fainted in wool uniforms as the heat neared 105 degrees.

More than 800 C-47 transport planes carried over 13,000 paratroopers across the Channel before dawn on D-Day. One flew at the front. After the war it hauled freight for decades. Then it sat in a Wisconsin boneyard, next in line to be cut up and modernized. An Air Force historian chasing a serial number found it there. Passengers still board through the door the paratroopers jumped from.

A World War II bomber named Doc sat in the Mojave for 42 years as a Navy target. An Air Force veteran spent more than eleven of those years talking the Navy into letting it go. It went home to Wichita, where 1,644 B-29s were built, and retirees from those lines helped rebuild it. Doc is one of two B-29s still flying, and it lands at airports every year so people can climb inside.

In 1982 Vietnam veteran John Devitt went to the dedication of the Wall in Washington and wanted people who could never make the trip to feel what he felt. With other veterans he built a half-size copy carrying the same names and first set it up in Tyler, Texas in 1984. Two copies of The Moving Wall still travel the country, about a week in each town, from April to November.

Harold Jellicoe Percival died alone at 99 with no family to attend his funeral. The care home placed a four-line notice in the Lytham St Annes Express asking anyone to come. Someone tweeted a photo of it. On Armistice Day at 11am, over 200 strangers packed the crematorium and scores more stood outside in the rain.

The US military spent $2.7 billion on a giant missile defense blimp called JLENS. On its second day of active duty, it broke free. It dragged 6,700 feet of cable across Pennsylvania. Knocked out power to 30,000 people. F-16s were scrambled but couldn't stop it. It deflated in a field. State police secured it. The program was quietly shelved.