26Operation Outward
During World War 2, the British launched nearly 100,000 weather balloons, each with a trailing long metal wire toward occupied Europe. They caused power outages when they shorted out power lines and caused at least one German power station to burn down.
27. World War 2 plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe pioneered the use of saline baths as a treatment for burns after he noticed that pilots who crashed into the sea had faster rates of healing from burns than those who crashed on land.
28. During World War 2, the German army used a radar system called Wotan. The British scientist R.V. Jones figured out how the system worked by assuming that it used a single beam based on the fact that the Germanic god Wotan had only one eye.
29. During World War 2, weather reports were censored to prevent enemy submarines from learning about the conditions. A football game in Chicago was so covered in fog that the radio announcer couldn’t see the field at all, but afterward he was officially thanked for never using the word ‘fog’ or mentioning the weather.
30. 10% of those conscripted in the UK during World War 2 were sent to serve not on the battlefield, but in the coal mines that powered the war machine. Some of these soldiers were not released from service until two years after the war ended. They were not formally recognized for their contribution until 1995.
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31Rationing in the UK
Rationing in the United Kingdom during World War actually increased life expectancy in the country and decreased infant mortality. This was because all people were required to consume a varied diet. The only negative effect from it was the increased time needed for meals to consume the necessary calories from bread and potatoes, and what they described as a “remarkable” increase in flatulence from the high amount of starch in the diet. Scientists also noted that their feces had increased by 250% in volume.
32. During World War 2, Lt. Friedrich Lengfeld, a German officer ordered his soldiers to hold fire to allow the rescue of an American soldier who stepped on a landmine. When no one came to his rescue, the officer himself went to rescue the soldier but stepped on a landmine himself.
33. A cyclist named Gino Bartali used his fame as a winner of the Tour de France to smuggle counterfeit documents hidden inside his bicycle through the Nazi checkpoints in Italy during World War 2 under the guise of training. These documents allowed as many as 800 Jews escape persecution by the Nazis.
34. While a 20-year-old Rod Serling was serving in World War 2, he saw his best friend get killed by a falling crate of food. Seeing the unpredictability and irony of life and death, he would later use that experience to create, ‘The Twilight Zone.’
35. The Night Witches was a World War 2 German nickname for the all-female aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. They would idle the engines near their target and glide to the bomb release point with only wind noise to reveal them. The Germans likened the sound to broomsticks, giving their nickname.
