Los Angeles, 1942, just a few months after
the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. Panic was in the air. People imagined another attack, but this time
on the city of angels, a place which was churning out aircraft with impressive speed. Folks envisioned the Hollywood hills on fire,
people fighting in the streets, and then it came, the fateful day. February 25. Coastal radar picks up an unidentified flying
object about 125 miles west of Los Angeles. “Oh God,” the radar technician thinks,
“It’s heading straight for the city.” Half an hour later and more radars pick up
the object. Air-raid sirens fill the air. Citizens of LA watch in horror as anti-air
artillery and .50 caliber rounds fire above their heads. The Japanese are here, they think. They imagine their houses on fire. Their windows being shot to pieces. This was the Battle of Los Angeles, and we
imagine many of you have never even heard of it. It’s just one fact of many you are going
to hear today, part of a history lesson that will blow you away. Settle in, secure your position and watch
the facts fly by. 50. Battle of Los Angeles: Continued. Ok, so we couldn’t just leave it there. You’re thinking, there was a Battle of Los
Angeles and no one even told me about it. I must have missed that bit in my high school
history class. It’s not quite as it seems. It is certainly true that people feared that
the Japanese might move an aircraft carrier closer to the USA and start an invasion from
there. In Oakland schools were closed because of
this fear. There were blackouts, too. In Seattle businesses were smashed up by angry
mobs because they left their lights on, making them a bullseye for fearsome Japanese bombers. The situation got hairier on February 24,
1942, when U.S. Naval Intelligence warned that an attack might be imminent. At 2.25 am the next day the sirens sounded,
and a blackout was ordered. The 37th Coast Artillery Brigade started firing
.50-caliber machine guns and anti-aircraft shells. Imagine being there, imagine seeing that as
you rubbed your sleepy eyes early in the morning. But nothing came. Not one Japanese plane was spotted. Buildings and cars were damaged, and five
people died, three in car accidents related to the chaos and another two people’s hearts
gave out during that very stressful hour of hearing gunfire. The next day the headlines were all about
this Los Angeles attack, or non-attack. But what had actually happened? Some media said “war nerves” and others
called it a false alarm. But the people, the people were rightly concerned. Was there something the government wasn’t
telling them? They had to wait to get answers. After the war ended the Japanese stood up
and said, “Hey guys, we never went anywhere near Los Angeles. You were all tripping.” To cut a long story short, that flying object
that had been picked up by radar was an off-course weather balloon. The Battle of Los Angeles had been part-panic,
part missing balloon. Some folks said the object was an alien UFO,
but we won’t get into that today. 49. So, that was more of a story than a hard fact,
and there will be many more insane stories, but let’s have a look at some facts, too. The U.S. army is massive, absolutely massive. In total, it contains around 1.4 million personnel,
a few more people than the country of Estonia. But it’s not the biggest army. That would be the North Korean army, at around
2.2 million personnel. 48. Believe it or not, the U.S army is actually
older than the U.S. Americans celebrate the birth of their nation on July 4. The year the nation was established was 1776,
but the date that the army was established was June 14, 1775. It makes sense really. If they were gonna kick out those damned imperialist
Brits they needed an army to do it, well the French helped a bit, too, as did some heroic
foreign military leaders that we’ll talk about later. 47. We just said that the army employs about 1.4
million people, with some of them being in the reserves. Still, that means it is the second largest
employer in the USA behind Walmart, which employs around 2.3 million people. Amazon is a long way behind, employing something
close to 800,000 people. 46. 16 of the 45 U.S. presidents have served in
the U.S. army. Dwight D. Eisenhower served in the army in
both world war one and world war two. Theodore Roosevelt is the only president to
have won the distinguished Medal of Honor for his service in the army. During the Spanish-American War he “led
a desperate and gallant charge up San Juan Hill”, risked life and limb under a barrage
of enemy fire, and then he jumped into a trench and killed a man, making it possible for the
boys behind him to advance. 45. We guess some of you have at one point have
owned a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, but we also guess that you didn’t know they were
the brainchild of the U.S. army. That’s right. There used to be a thing called the United
States Army Air Corps, which was the flying part of the army before the US Air Force was
created. In 1929, there was a guy that was tasked with
working with a glasses producer to make glasses that would make life easier for pilots. His name was John A. Macready, Colonel John
Macready. He was up to the task, and he got working
on some glasses that wouldn’t fog-up like goggles and at the same time would reduce
the glare from the bright blue sky. In the late thirties the Ray-Ban Aviator glasses
were patented, and the rest is history. 44. The U.S. army created the world's first submarine. This was called the Turtle, and it was introduced
in 1774 when the army was fighting the British during the American Revolutionary War. While the vehicle looked pretty cool, it never
really did what it was supposed to do. That was to affix explosives to British warships
in New York Harbor. They never pulled that off, and then poor
old Turtle sank into the sea when it was aboard a vessel. 43. It’s thought that about 2.1 million soldiers
fought for The Union during the Civil War. What’s maybe quite surprising is that about
one quarter of them were immigrants. If you count the sons of immigrants that fought,
then it is closer to half the army’s population. 42. During the Second World War the brand Coca-Cola
was already a kind of symbol that represented the American Way. And you know what, American soldiers fighting
abroad really pined for stuff. Most of them couldn’t get their hands on
Coke. Coca-Cola Company president Robert W. Woodruff
heard about this and decided it wasn’t good enough, so he made a promise. He told soldiers that wherever they were,
they would be able to get a Coke for the cost of five cents. But he needed the help of General Dwight Eisenhower
to get the Cokes to them. Together they cooked up a plan to get those
addictive cans of tooth-rotting liquid to the soldiers. Coca-Cola opened up a bunch of plants overseas,
but it went one step further when it introduced people called “Technical Observers”. These Coke workers wore army uniforms and
looked the part, but they weren’t actually military. They were only there to make sure the plants
were built and those soldiers got their fix. It actually boosted morale a lot, with one
soldier writing this in a letter: “Dear Folks, You’ll never guess what I
had to drink this evening. Not whiskey, not gin, not Calvados, not beer,
but good old fashioned “Coca-Cola” in the bottle that’s made to fit the hand.” Suffice to say, Coca-Cola did ok out of the
deal, too. It had entered Europe and it wasn’t about
to leave. 41. There are some sources that will tell you
that the US army pioneered modern guerrilla warfare, but that’s debatable. A lot of armies could claim that, but it is
certainly true that the man named General Francis "Swamp Fox" Marion was an excellent
guerrilla warfare tactician. This guy, also credited with being the man
that led the first special forces in the US, got his nickname because he’d take militiamen
into the swamps where they’d wait in hiding for Loyalists and British regulars. They didn’t fight the regular way, but would
jump out of the swamps and kill. His men, who weren’t paid and supplied their
own arms and sometimes food, frightened the hell out of their enemy. So we don’t get in trouble, we should add
that he was despised by many and criticized for being more than harsh to his men and someone
who committed many atrocities. 40. From the years 2006 to 2020, 17,645 active-duty
personnel died serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. 39. 53,402 U.S. soldiers died in combat during
World War One, and most of those served in the army. 38. The war that saw the most deaths in the U.S.
was the Civil War. When you count Union soldiers as well as Confederate
soldiers the number of deaths is between 755,000 - 800,000 victims, which was about 449 per
day. That makes it the worst war that U.S. soldiers
have ever fought in. Ok, now for something even more surprising. 37. The U.S. army used to use the Swastika as
a symbol. You heard that right. The 45th Infantry used to pin it on their
sleeves, but they only did that to honor their native American brothers in arms. What you have to remember is that before Adolf
Hitler hijacked that symbol, it was used for thousands of years in many different cultures
and was a symbol of good luck. For instance, in Sanskrit it means, “conducive
to well-being.” That’s why you can still see it today all
over Asia, something that surprises less educated travelers. It won’t surprise you, though, because now
you know where it came from. Needless to say, when Hitler started using
it the 45th Infantry dropped it. 36. Batteries, the US army needs them, and any
soldier will tell you that they weigh quite a bit. You see, if you want to go on a mission you
need to power stuff. It takes around 400 pounds (181 kg) of batteries
for 30 men going on a 3-day mission. You can actually find a slew of articles talking
about the army’s battery problem. 35. In the late 1960s, the army introduced something
called the Walking Truck, or if you want to get technical, the Cybernetic Anthropomorphous
Machine. The giant robot had four big legs and while
it looked like something from a sci-fi movie it wasn’t exactly nimble. The plodding machine was designed to solve
the army’s age-old problem of carrying stuff. Like in the movie Alien, a person would sit
inside it and control with their feet and hands. It weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg) and travelled
at 5 miles per hour (8 km/h). While it looked like a good idea, it wasn’t. It was so tiring to operate that a person
could only move for a short amount of time. 34. Only 28 percent of folks aged 17-23 in the
US qualify to serve in the army. It has high standards. One recruiting commander said this about those
standards, “We don’t want to sacrifice quality. If we lower the quality, yes we might be able
to make our mission, but that’s not good for the organization.” 33. In 2020, the Pentagon’s budget meant $178
billion would go to the Army, $207.1 billion for the Navy and Marine Corps, a further $191.8
billion for the Air Force, and just $15.4 billion for the Space Force. 32. Who first looked at the Grand Canyon and thought,
wow, nice, can’t wait to tell everyone about this and put it on a map? It was the army. You see, the US army was responsible for mapping
much of the USA. In the early 1800s the US government wanted
to map the entirety of the USA, which was no easy feat. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was the solution,
and that was led by the U.S. army. 31. George Washington didn’t actually want to
be the commander of the army. He didn’t think he was up to the task. He was happy when the war was over, but then
he resigned. This is what he told Congress:
“Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity
afforded the United States of becoming a respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment
I accepted with diffidence; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task.” A man of humility! As you’ll soon see, there were many more
great military leaders. 30. After World War Two and for many years on,
the US army had a dump-athon. In total, the army admitted to secretly dumping
64 million pounds of nerve and mustard gas agents in the sea. Also thrown in were 400,000 chemical-filled
bombs, landmines and rockets, and with that 500 tons of radioactive waste. It was revealed that storage was expensive
and dangerous and destroying was difficult, so overboard the stuff went. 29. During World War One the German military was
unhappy with the US Army. It didn’t much like the shotguns the army
were using, claiming that being hit by a shotgun was unnecessarily painful. 28. The US hasn’t fully banned the use of landmines. Under President Obama there was a ban on the
use of landmines except for the defense of South Korea, but under the Trump administration
restrictions were lifted. In 1997, the Mine Ban Treaty was signed by
most countries, but the US, along with China, Egypt, India, Israel, Pakistan and Russia
did not sign. 27. The problem with landmines is that they tend
to kill your own. In 1997, the New York Times cited a Pentagon
report that said thousands of US army soldiers in the Vietnam and Korean Wars were killed
or severely injured by American-made land mines. Ok, sorry to sound so depressing. We promise something amusing soon. 26. Who doesn’t like a good dog story? The US Army during World War One, like other
countries, employed dogs for various tasks. The army’s most decorated dog was named
Stubby. Working for the 102nd Infantry Regiment, Stubby
served for 18 months and joined in 17 battles on the Western Front. He was injured by a German grenade at one
point, but soon made a comeback and went back to the trenches. Stubby was then promoted to sergeant. He could find injured men, could alert soldiers
to gas attacks and could hear the sound of artillery before soldiers, so he was able
to tell the soldiers when rounds were coming. When Stubby gave the sign, they ducked for
cover. 25. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
went a step further with animals many years later. Researchers implanted beetles with nerve and
muscle stimulators. That meant they could be controlled remotely. They were also big enough to carry heat sensors
and cameras. These things would be great for search-and-rescue
missions, although we are not sure if the army ever used them. 24. In the 1970s, the UK paid the Mauritian government
to take islanders from Diego Garcia in the Indian ocean. The US military wanted the island, but it
didn’t want the islanders. Those poor guys were resettled, but they mostly
ended up in slums. 23. Talking about land, the US army owns 15 million
acres of land in the United States, which is about 24,000 square miles. If you can’t conceive of the size, it would
be the 42nd largest state if the land was in one piece. 22. In 2003, a US Army sergeant was on a one month
leave visiting family and friends. While back on American soil he decided to
play the lottery. He won, and he won big, taking $88.9 million. 21. Arguably, the most shocking US Army war crime
was something that happened in the Vietnam War. On March 16, 1968, US army soldiers walked
into a village and murdered 347 to 504 unarmed citizens, most of them women and children. There are more gory details, but we won’t
get into that today. You can see for yourself. It is called the My Lai Massacre. 20. At the beginning of World War One the US army
had 117,000 personnel. Then came the Selective Service Act of 1917,
a draft, and by the end of the war the army had drafted 2.7 million men. 19. The navy had a song, the air force had a song,
but the army didn’t. So, in 1956 it was decided that “The Army
Goes Rolling Along” should be the official army song. 18. Do army soldiers take the greatest risks? That’s up for debate, but we can tell you
that 70 percent of all Medals of Honor are awarded to army soldiers. 17. Hungry soldiers are a big problem. You need to give those guys their sustenance. But getting food to troops can be problematic,
and that’s why the army for a few years now has been trying to figure out how to use
3-D printing for food. 16. Sticking with the futuristic, DARPA has a
Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology Program. Through that, it is hoped that soon soldiers
will be able to control drones with their minds. DARPA is also working on a standalone contact
lens that a soldier could wear. This would enhance his visual capabilities. 15. We said ‘his’, but 19 percent of army
officers are women and 14 percent of enlisted force are women. The military at this time does not report
on LGBTQ+ service members. 14. When George Washington was putting together
his army, he was well aware that his men needed a lot of training. He contacted a decorated Prussian military
expert named Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a person who was pivotal in the Independence
of the United States. He was one of the fathers of the continental
army, he wrote the book “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of
the United States” and he later became chief of staff for President Washington. What some people didn’t know back then,
was that von Steuben was gay. It’s not clear just who he was romantically
involved with, because at the time same-sex intimate relationships were illegal. 13. It was reported in 2010 that the US army had
decided not to use Velcro anymore because for one, it got clogged with dirt, and for
another thing it made a loud ripping sound – which might get a person shot. Then some years later there were rumors that
the army had designed a new kind of Velcro that didn’t make much of a sound at all. The sound reduction was 95 percent. This was all apparently classified. Maybe that’s why we can’t find much information
about it. We’re getting close to the top ten now. 12. This relates to all branches of the military,
but we think you should know about it since it signifies the changing times. The US Department of Defense used to be called
the US Department of War. It was named that from 1789 to 1947. 11. In the 1950s, the US army sprayed microscopic
zinc cadmium sulfide particles over parts of the US and Canada. This wasn’t about hurting anyone, but just
to see where the particles would go. Since the substance was fluorescent, they
could judge what a chemical weapons attack would look like. It was concluded that under most meteorological
conditions, large areas could be covered by dropped aerosols. We don’t think any Americans were hurt during
these operations, but the secret tests remain controversial today. Studies have shown that some damage could
have been done, while other studies have stated, “exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide at these
levels could cause people to become sick.” Still, some of the critics have said using
the US as a testing ground was perhaps not great. 10. Operation Big Itch has to be one of the best
covert operation names. This happened at the army’s biological and
chemical weapons testing facility called Dugway Proving Ground. In this operation the army wanted to know
if tropical rat fleas could be dropped out of the sky in little bombs. If so, would the fleas float down and start
making people terribly itchy? We should day that none of the fleas in the
trials were carrying biological agents. The tests were successful, which is pretty
scary. The fleas not only fell to the ground, but
they invaded the test subjects waiting for them, Guinea pigs. It was concluded that if fleas were dropped
on an enemy battalion, they could cause havoc for about 24 hours. Similar tests were performed in the 60s with
mosquitoes, and they were dropped where humans lived. And yes, they did bite people. 9. Ok, the last of the secret tests. In 1966, the US army wanted to know if it
was possible that an American subway could be hit by a poisonous gas attack. What they did was a simulated attack. Undercover army personnel went into the New
York subway carrying lightbulbs filled with Bacillus subtilis, which was thought to be
harmless. They smashed the bulbs and then saw what happened. An army report later said:
“A large portion of the working population in downtown New York City would be exposed
to disease if one or more pathogenic agents were disseminated covertly in several subway
lines at a period of peak traffic.” When this news was made public there was quite
the uproar. The army said, hey, no one got harmed, but
some folks asked, how do you know, you didn’t monitor all the people. But the fact is, the law states that if such
testing is done there should be “voluntary, informed consent”. Doctors now say that Bacillus subtilis is
a pathogen and can make people ill, but there is little chance it could kill someone. 8. The US army has in its arsenal something called
dense depleted uranium bullets. If you hit an armored vehicle with one of
them, it can pierce the armor, and then the vehicle will catch fire. It’s one way of blowing up something. 7. Only five army officers have received five
stars. One of them was the president to be, Dwight
D. Eisenhower. 6. The US army wanted to freak Vietnamese soldiers
out in the Vietnam war. They used what’s called psychological warfare
and played on the Vietnamese troops’ belief in ghosts. This was called Operation Wandering Soul and
consisted of blasting out spooky sounds into the jungle. The tape, called Ghost Tape Number Ten, was
also played outside US bases. 5. Soldiers started wearing dog tags around their
neck in the Civil War, but back then they weren’t official. Soldiers still wear them today, and on them
you’ll find a soldier’s name, Social Security number, blood type and religious preference. During World War Two, there were only three
religious preferences available: P for Protestant, C for Catholic and H for Hebrew (Jewish). The army has branched out now, and you can
get more religions or no religion at all. An army website states that you can even get
agnostic, or Jedi, or Druid, it’s totally up to the soldier, so we guess some of them
have fun with it. In the government and in the military, you
might hear the word “God” a lot, but these days religious diversity is embraced. 4. Gulf War syndrome is something that affected
and still affects soldiers who came home from the 1991 Gulf War. It can be hellish, with veterans complaining
of muscle pain, fatigue, chronic diarrhea, rashes, anxiety and depression, insomnia,
defects of memory, tooth decay, loss of balance, bladder dysfunction and problems thinking. Some have even said that babies of veterans
have been born with abnormalities that could be associated with the syndrome. It’s bad, really bad, but those things also
affect people who haven’t gone to war. What’s startling, though, is that Gulf War
veterans are twice as likely to suffer from those ailments. No one really knows what caused it. Was it exposure to biological weapons, pesticides,
or was it from taking a nerve gas prophylaxis? That’s what is so worrying, not knowing. 3. For a long time it was thought that US soldiers
returning from the Vietnam War were spat on by antiwar activists. Some people still think that today. It didn’t happen. It’s a myth, fake news. There were stories going around saying that
hippies spat on soldiers when they landed at San Francisco airport. Not true, the soldiers would have landed at
military air bases, where activists wouldn’t have been allowed to enter. 2. The movie Saving Private Ryan is actually
based on a real person, except there were no Ryans in the real version. The Niland brothers were the real people,
four brothers of Irish descent who all fought in the US military during World War Two. It’s a very sad story. Technical Sergeant Robert Niland died on June
6, in Normandy, after saying he’d stay behind and try and hold off the advancing Germans. Second Lieutenant Preston Niland died in action
on June 7, 1944, also in Normandy. On May 16, 1944, Technical Sergeant Edward
Niland, had been captured by the Japanese and was a POW. He’d jumped out of a B-25 and his team assumed
that he’d died. Can you imagine what poor old Mr. and Mrs.
Niland were thinking back in Tonawanda, New York, when they were told that three of their
sons were dead. Mrs. Niland apparently received the three
death notifications on the same day. Her only consolation was that Sergeant Frederick
Niland was alive and well, albeit fighting in a deadly war. Just like in the movie, the then War Department
said enough is enough, we need to get that last brother back to New York. Nothing spectacular happened after that. He was sent to England, and then back to the
US. Another added bonus was that in May, 1945,
the family got word that Edward was alive and he was coming home. 1. Ok, here we are at number one. We thought a fitting fact here would be to
tell you how difficult it is to join the army. Here goes:
You must be from the US, and you must be aged between 17 and 34. If you’re 17, you’ll need your parents
permission. You’ll need that high school diploma and
you can’t have more than two dependents. If you tick all the boxes, then you can go
and have a military Entrance Processing Station medical exam. You’re not in yet. Now you’ll have to take the Armed Services
Vocational Aptitude Battery exam. A couple of questions we saw on a practise
exam were how many moons does Saturn have and how long is the small intestine. They aren’t easy questions since Saturn
has named and unnamed moons and various sources give different answers. As for the small intestine, it could be anything
from 10 feet to 35 feet. If you get in, for the first six months you’ll
get paid in the region of $20,000. Now educate yourself some more and watch,
“50 Insane TANK Facts That Will Shock You!” Or have a look at this, “50 Insane Fighter
Jets Facts That Will Shock You!”
