The Might of the US Military: 40 Incredible Facts You Need to Know

On February 24, 1942, the US Military ordered a total blackout of Los Angeles and fired 1,400 anti-air artillery and thousands of .50 caliber shots at a hovering object for 1 hour.

27. In 1968, the US army accidentally killed 6,000 sheep on ranch land north of its biological and chemical weapons testing facility known as the Dugway Proving Ground. The Skull Valley Sheep Kill - as it came to be known, was caused by the open-air testing of a highly toxic nerve agent "VX".

28. In the 60s, the US military secretly sprayed (possibly radioactive) experimental chemicals, like zinc cadmium, on thousands of residents of poor neighborhoods in St. Louis, without their knowledge or consent, to see what would happen.

29. The US military in World War 2 painted special paint on jeeps. The paint’s purpose was to protect against chemical weapons attacks. It’s called “M5 liquid vesicant detector paint.”

30. In the 1950s, the US military secretly dropped millions of mosquitoes onto populated areas of Georgia and Florida while testing the feasibility of "Entomological Warfare."

The US Military used to play a creepy ghost recording, called the Wandering Soul, over loudspeakers in Vietnam to scare enemy soldiers.

32. The US Military designed a laser rifle called the PHASR rifle, which disorients and temporarily blinds the target. It also looks like the Storm Rifle in Halo 4.

33. The 45th Infantry Division of the United States Army used a swastika on a red background as a unit symbol until the 1930s. The division wore the patch while fighting against Germany in World War 1.

34. The US Military did not help Marvel with The Avengers (2012) because they could not understand the role of SHIELD in the chain of command.

35. The US military uses dolphins to find and identify underwater mines because they are better at it than humans.

The US military allows Norse Heathens to grow beards and the Hammer of Thor symbol is allowed on headstones.

37. One of the highest honors in the US military is to serve as a Sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknowns where fewer than 20 percent of all volunteers are accepted for training and of those only a fraction pass training to become full-fledged Tomb Guards.

38. The US military has a modified version of the M1 Abrams tank called the M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle that can plow through minefields with ease and launch a rocket-propelled "explosive sausage" capable of destroying barricades in an area the size of a football field (the M58 MICLIC).

39. In 1971, the US military kicked out the inhabitants of Diego Garcia Atoll to build a military base. Some (not all) inhabitants received only $6000 of restitution 15 years later.

40. In the 1980s, the US military proposed putting nuclear missiles in concealed railcars (Peacekeeper Rail Garrison) throughout the country as a countermeasure against a possible Soviet attack