Serling’s Wartime Inspiration
51. While Rod Serling was 20 years old and serving in World War 2, he watched his best friend be killed by a falling crate of food. After witnessing the unpredictability and irony of life and death, he later drew on that experience to create, ‘The Twilight Zone.’
52. In the final months of World War 2, Japan intended to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in San Diego, California, hoping the plague would spread as much terror to the American population. Japan’s surrender came only 5 weeks before the plan was set to be carried out.
53. During the Battle of Stalingrad, German soldiers suffered more casualties while trying to capture one apartment building, Pavlov’s House, than they did when taking over the city of Paris.
54. Rationing in the United Kingdom during World War actually raised life expectancy in the country and lowered infant mortality. This happened because everyone was required to eat a varied diet. The only harmful effect was the extra time meals took to consume the needed calories from bread and potatoes, along with what they called a “remarkable” increase in flatulence from the high amount of starch in the diet. Scientists also observed that their feces had increased by 250% in volume.
55. A ‘Richter scale for human calamity’ known as the Foster scale exists. On the Foster scale, World War 2 was the most disastrous event in human history with a score of 11.1, the Black Death ranks number 2 at 10.9, and World War 1 is number 3 with 10.5.
56. Among the thousands of men on the Normandy beaches on the D-Day, there was one single woman. Martha Gellhorn was a rogue war correspondent who had stowed away in the toilet of a hospital ship and also happened to be the third wife of Ernest Hemingway.
57. A dog named Judy spent a good part of World War 2 in a Japanese prison camp protecting prisoners from being beaten, by taking the beating herself. Judy received the Dickin Medal for her effort.
58. Just as the USA entered World War 2, serial bomber George Metesky informed NYPD that, as a patriot of his country, he would make no bomb threats for the duration of the war. He stayed true to his word.
59. The National School Lunch Act was passed in USA in 1946, in part, because of the number of draftees that were rejected during World War 2 due to being malnourished.
60. The BBC ran a contest asking vacationers for pictures of French beaches prior to Normandy landing to help gather intelligence and determine whether the beach was suitable for an amphibious landing.
Bletchley Park Joked Orders
61. During World War 2, British code breakers became so skilled at deciphering German messages that people joked it would’ve been faster for a German commander to phone Bletchley Park for his orders.
62. During World War 2, some black U.S soldiers stationed in England were drinking with local people in a pub when U.S Military police arrived to prevent them from being served and arrested them for not segregating. The white locals in the pub stood up for the black men, which eventually led to the Lancashire riot and gunshots.
63. During World War 2, the British kept a completely invented army, the “4th Army”, and used it successfully on multiple occasions to pull German forces away from invasion targets, including the Normandy landings.
64. During World War 2, weather reports were censored so enemy submarines would not learn the conditions. A football game in Chicago was so engulfed in fog that the radio announcer could not see the field at all, but afterward he was officially thanked for never saying the word ‘fog’ or referring to the weather.
65. When World War 2 began, USA had the 12th largest army, behind Brazil, and the 18th largest air force in the world. By the summer of 1944, we were building bombers at the rate of one per hour.
66. During World War 2, the average life expectancy of a flamethrower operator in combat was under 10 minutes.
67. In the UK there are 53 ‘Thankful Villages’ where every troop who left to fight in World War 1 came back alive. Of that list, 13 are ‘Doubly Thankful’ and had that same outcome in World War 2.
68. In 1944 during World War 2, an Australian soldier named Robert Kerr McLaren took out his own appendix in the middle of a Philippine jungle without any anesthetic and with only a mirror and an ordinary knife. The operation took 4.5 hours, and he stitched himself up with jungle fiber.
69. 80% of males born in the Soviet Union in 1923 did not survive World War 2. The Soviets lost more people during the Battle of Stalingrad than the Americans did in the whole war.
70. During World War 2, Lt. Friedrich Lengfeld, a German officer, ordered his soldiers to hold fire so an American soldier who stepped on a landmine could be rescued. When no one came to rescue the soldier, the officer went himself, but he stepped on a landmine too.
Shrapnel Still in Sand
71. The fighting during the Normandy landing was so fierce that 4% of the sand on Normandy beach is made up of shrapnel from D-Day that has broken down.
72. The Night Witches was a World War 2 German nickname for the all-female aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. They would cut the engines near their target and glide to the bomb release point with only wind noise to give them away. The Germans compared the sound to broomsticks, which produced their nickname.
73. During World War 2, Steinway & Sons airdropped pianos with large parachutes and complete tuning instructions into the battle for the American troops. Known as the Victory Vertical or G.I. Steinways, the pianos were meant to provide a bit of relaxation. The pianos came in olive, blue, and gray drab.
74. During World War 2, Wolfgang Doeblin was a Jewish-German mathematician fighting for the French. He took his own life at the age of 25 after his company was surrounded by enemy forces. A sealed letter he had sent to the French Academy of Sciences was finally opened in 2000, revealing that he had already proven a famous result in stochastic calculus.
75. During World War 2, British secret services made a special edition of Monopoly for prisoners of war held by the Nazis. The games were handed out by fake charity groups created by the secret services and contained maps, compasses, real money, and other objects useful for escaping.
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