Page 119 - History Facts

Medal Of Honor recipients are subject to several military and civilian privileges!

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the US government. Each branch of the armed forces has their own version of the Medal of Honor, but all are given to the recipient by the President on behalf of congress in honor of extremely heroic acts that go above and beyond the call of duty. Therefore, it’s often given posthumously. 

Actually, more than half of all the Medal of Honors given after 1941 have been posthumously. By law, recipients of the Medal of Honor have special privileges. Each recipient can have their name on the Medal of Honor Roll and are entitled to a pension above all others in the military. Right now the pension is at $1,237 per month. 

They also receive a 10% increase in retired pay and are eligible to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. They are invited to all future presidential inaugurations and inaugural balls. 

Their children are allowed in military academies with no restrictions and they can receive special license plates. They also receive the privilege of being saluted by outranking servicemen. 

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The largest single-flight passenger load was 1,122 passengers, including 3 babies born mid-flight!

This record-setting flight took place as part of Operation Solomon. Operation Solomon was an effort by the Israelis in 1991 to help rescue some Ethiopian Jews. The Ethiopian government under leader Mengistu Haile Mariam was about to fall to Eritrean and Tigrean. 

The goal of the operation was to take Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Israel was concerned about the Jews’ safety during the government transition, so they decided to take them out of the country. They also wanted to take advantage of the weakened government. 

The government had not allowed much emigration previously, but Israelis hoped that with the toppling of the government, they would be able to get the Jews out of Ethiopia. That’s how a plane ended up with so many people! It was a quick attempt at getting as many Jews as possible back to Israel. 

An EI AI 747 carried 1,122 passengers. Officially, it only registered 1,087, but some of the children hid in their mother’s skirts and got on that way. Planners only anticipated putting 760 people on the plane, but the Ethipian Jews were light, so they fit a lot more on. There were also 3 babies born on the way to Israel. 

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An ancient tomb in Ireland is older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Giza!

Newgrange tomb is what is called a passage tomb, which means that it contains a narrow passage made of stone and earth and containing several burial locations. Beyond simply being a passage tomb, it is a site of historical importance. 

It is a spiritual and ceremonial representation of the people who lived in Ireland over 5,000 years ago when it was constructed! Newgrange was carefully constructed, showing evidence of a society that understood concepts of construction and that was well-organized. 

It is a kidney-shaped mound and has an inner passage that is 19 meters long. It covers over an acre of land. In the passage is a cross-shaped chamber with a corbelled roof. It also has 97 curbstones decorated with art. It has been called a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. 

Newgrange is one of several similar constructions that are built along the River Boyne. Together these structures are known as Brú na Bóinne. Knowthl is the largest of the mounds, but there are about 35 other smaller mounds. 

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Plans to kill Hitler were cancelled because people were afraid his successor might be more rational and effective.

Strategically deciding to make the kill on a big player in a government, generally a government leader is a hard decision to make. One major assassination that ended badly was the killing of Reinhard Heydrich. 

He was the leader of the Third Reich as it existed in Czechoslovakia, and inspired quite a bit of terror. It was his assassination that led governments to be more careful about assassination in the future. 

Heydrich was killed by Two Czechoslovakian men who parachuted in. Records had it that they had been trained in how to best assassinate the man, and also planning to continue through with the assassination even if it meant their own deaths. 

The assassins made their attempt when Heydrich was in an open-top car, and the injuries that he received killed him. 

As a result of the assassination, Nazis responded with more terror: killing men, and putting women and children in concentration camps. Historians in general agree that his death caused more pain than it saved. 

Perhaps for this reason plans to take out Hitler were stopped. The biggest fear was that whoever replaced Hitler would be more effective and logical and better able to defeat Britain. Besides that, is it ethically acceptable to take out specific political enemies in a war? 

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There was a camera invented in the 1940's that could take pictures of nuclear bombs milliseconds after detonation.

Dr. Harold Edgerton developed the Rapatronic Photographic technique in the 1940s. It was able to record very early times of a nuclear explosion’s fireball growth on camera. The exposures were as short as 10 nanoseconds. 

Each rapatronic camera would take just one picture. A group of four to ten cameras were arranged at test sites to shoot different intervals of the nuclear explosion to see the increase in fireball growth. 

Early bomb light passed through the cell, which precisely gated the inbound light stream for exposure on the photographic film. Nuclear weapons were designed on two principles, fission and fusion. Both reactions release large quantities of energy from small amounts of matter. 

The first atomic bomb released the same amount of energy as 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb released the same amount of energy as 10,000,000 tons of TNT. A modern thermonuclear weapon weighs only 2,400 pounds. 

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