Navy Facts

English sailors were called "limeys" because the Royal Navy mandated lime juice rations to prevent scurvy, though they originally used lemon juice starting in 1795 before switching to limes in 1804.

Britney Spears’ music is used by the British Navy to scare off Somali pirates.

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."

A woman drove her SUV into the water behind a Virginia Beach seafood restaurant. The doors wouldn't open. Strangers smashed the windows as it sank. One of them was Jeremy Way - a 17-year Navy rescue swimmer who happened to be eating lunch nearby. He put her in a cross-chest carry and swam her to safety. The SUV vanished moments later.

Bamse was a St Bernard in the Royal Norwegian Navy during World War II. He wore a steel helmet at the gun tower in battle and once pushed an attacker into the sea to save an officer. The crew gave him his own bus pass, and he rode Scotland's buses alone to round up sailors from the pubs before curfew. Bamse died in 1944. In 2006, he won the PDSA Gold Medal, the only WWII animal so honored.