26Operation Unthinkable
Winston Churchill had a plan called "Operation Unthinkable" to invade the Soviet Union in a surprise attack immediately after the end of World War 2. His plan was finally shot down when it was learned that the Soviet troops remaining outnumbered allied troops 3:1.
27. In 1953 CIA launched Operation Ajax which was a plot to overthrow Iran's democratically elected government. As part of the mission, CIA agents bombed the house of a prominent Muslim while posing as pro-government supporters. Iran’s democratically elected leader was successfully overthrown and about 200-300 people were killed.
28. Operation Looking Glass was a 24-hour a day, continuously airborne command center capable of directing all of the United States' nuclear assets as a backup, should SAC's ground facilities be destroyed. Taking turns, the airplanes stayed continuously staffed for 29 years.
29. Operation Mockingbird was a classified CIA program spanning from the '50s through to late '70s which was intended to influence the media and create ‘a propaganda network’ of leading American journalists. CIA recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA's views, funding student/cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts.
30. Operation Rocky Top was an FBI mission that discovered corruption in the Tennessee State government in late 1980s. With the help of a first-year state representative, the FBI had arrested 50 people including state officials, which led to two state officials committing suicide to avoid trial.
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31Operation Vegetarian
“Operation Vegetarian” was a 1942 plan by the British military to drop linseed cakes infected with anthrax on German fields where they would be eaten by cows and thus infect the civilian population that ate them. The test site in Scotland remained uninhabitable until the 1990s.
32. The record for most passengers ever carried by a commercial airliner is 1,088, by an El Al Boeing 747 during Operation Solomon, which involved the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and started on 24 May 1991. This figure included two babies born on the flight.
33. The US government had a secret military operation called “Project Eldest Son” during the Vietnam War. It involved leaving behind thousands of rounds of faulty ammo that would backfire in Vietcong AKs while also leaking fake documents that questioned quality control in Chinese munitions factories.
34. The largest movement of physical wealth in history was during World War 2. “Operation Fish” had 186,332 gold bars and more than 8 million ounces of gold coins sent to Canada from the United Kingdom with not even one crate or treasury bill going missing.
35. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was initially called "Operation Iraqi Liberation", but was quickly changed to "Operation Iraqi Freedom" due to the acronym spelling out "OIL".
