At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced ?sink us?), the shoulder patch of the US Army?s 45th Infantry division was the Swastika, and Hitler?s private train was named ?Amerika?. All three were soon changed for PR purposes.
Chrysler built B-29’s that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant called Diamond Star.
The Sanskrit word for “war” means “desire for more cows.”
When the Prussians surrounded Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, beef became so scarce that the people in Paris turned to eating horsemeat as an alternative. They still eat horse to this day. (perhaps this is why everytime they open their mouths they spew out a bunch of horse manure?)
When the Persians invaded Egypt and were besieging Pelusium, they used cats as shields. The Egyptians regarded certain animals, especially cats, as being sacred, and would not injure them on any account. The Persians carried the ‘sacred’ animals in front of them to the attack. The Egyptians did not dare to shoot their arrows for fear of wounding the animals, and so Pelusium was stormed successfully.
In 1941, during the German invasion of Russia, for every 100 Russian males aged 18, 99 would have been killed over the next five years.
During the days of the Manhattan Project all applicants for menial jobs at the plant where the atomic bomb was being built did not get a job if they could read. This was because US authorities didn’t want staff reading secret papers.
During WWII, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs. They failed.
A South African monkey was once awarded a medal and promoted to the rank of corporal during World War I.
In 1969 the Navy spent $375,000 on an “aerodynamic analysis of the self-suspended flare.” The study’s conclusion was that the Frisbee was not feasible as military hardware.
The Japanese confiscated chess books during World War II thinking they were military codes. Japan did not have an organized chess federation until 1968.
During World War II, a German U-boat was sunk by a truck. The U-boat in question attacked a convoy in the Atlantic and then rose to see the effect. The merchant ship it sank had material strapped to its deck including a fleet of trucks, one of which was thrown in the air by the explosion, landing on the U-boat and breaking its back.
British Royal Navy recruits at the gunnery school in Plymouth are being ordered not to fire live shells. Instead they have been instructed to check co-ordinates, line up a target, and then shout “Bang”. This is allegedly part of a drive by the Ministry of Defence drive to save money.