Military Facts

Iceland has no railway system or army!

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.

The U.S. army packs Tabasco pepper sauce in every ration kit that they give to soldiers.

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.

Nils Olav, a king penguin at Edinburgh Zoo, is the official mascot of the Norwegian King's Guard. The name and rank have passed down through three penguins since 1972 - knighted by King Harald V in 2008 and made Major General in 2023. At the 2023 ceremony, over 160 soldiers paraded past him so he could inspect the troops.

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.

Samsung is also a full time weapons manufacturer.

In 1948, Costa Rica abolished its military and spends the money on education and culture instead.

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.”

As she tells it, Catherine Roberts dreamed her son Nat, deployed to Iraq, was wrapped in a quilt. She woke up in her Delaware sewing room and made one, then sent it to a wounded stranger at Walter Reed. Volunteers have since hand-sewn over 454,000 Quilts of Valor for veterans touched by war, about 3,000 a month. The 450,000th went out in July 2026. They are still sewing.

In 2021, KPMG offered accountant Scott Ruskan a full-time job. He said no and joined the Coast Guard instead. On his very first mission as a rescue swimmer - the July 2025 Texas rising waters - he saved 165 people at a summer camp. He was the only rescuer on scene for four hours.

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."

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.

Eighteen thousand soldiers formed a Statue of Liberty a quarter mile long at Camp Dodge in 1918. 12,000 men made up the torch alone - just 17 formed the base. Several fainted in the 105 degree heat.

Peter Cullen almost voiced Optimus Prime like a shouting Hollywood tough guy. His brother Larry was a Marine Corps captain who served in Vietnam. Cullen has said that before his 1984 audition, Larry told him real heroes don't yell: "Be strong enough to be gentle." That advice became Optimus Prime's voice for more than 40 years.

Since 2005, the Honor Flight Network has flown over 300,000 veterans to Washington for free, to see the memorials built for them. About 22,000 fly every year through 130-plus hubs, with nearly 40,000 still waiting. Every flight still lands to strangers at the gate, clapping and waving flags. Houston's Hobby Airport welcomes its next flight home September 19, 2026. Anyone can stand in that crowd.

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.

Reveille, Texas A&M's collie mascot, outranks every cadet on campus. She holds the rank of Cadet General, with five diamonds - the Corps Commander only wears four. It started in 1931, when cadets hit a stray dog near Navasota and hid her in the dorm. She barked at the bugler's reveille call the next morning, and the name stuck. The rule stands: if she falls asleep on a cadet's bed, that cadet sleeps on the floor.

Lucca was a Marine Corps bomb dog who worked Iraq and Afghanistan for six years. In more than 400 missions, no Marine on her patrols was ever hurt. On March 23, 2012, a bomb took her front leg. Her handler carried her out. She was walking again within ten days, and in 2016 became the first US Marine Corps dog awarded Britain's Dickin Medal for bravery. She retired to the Marine who had been her very first handler.

Pepsi ran a commercial showing a Harrier jet for 7 million Pepsi Points. A business student named John Leonard did the math, raised $700,000, and mailed Pepsi a check demanding the jet. Pepsi said no. He sued. A judge ruled "no objective person could reasonably have concluded" the offer was real. Pepsi re-aired the ad with the price changed to 700 million points and a "Just Kidding" disclaimer.

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."