Resumo de Book Of Facts - Reader's Digest

SEEING IN THE DARK

A regular diet of carrots so improved the eyesight of Britain?s night fighter pilots in the Second World War that they were able to sight and shoot down bomber after German bomber. That, at least, was the story put out by the British Air Ministry- and the one which was widely believed by German intelligence. There is a grain of truth in it. Carrots do contain a substance called carotene, which is converted by the body into vitamin A. and vitamin A, in turn, aids the formation of visual purple, a pigment in the eyes which is essential for good vision in poor light. But other food, including milk, butter and green vegetables, also contain vitamin A. so extra carrots make no difference to anyone who already has a balanced diet. The wartime story, however, served to cover the truth about why British fighter pilots were so successful.
The real reason for their success was the chain of radar masts along the south and east coasts of England. The 106m high masts could detect a German bomber up to 160km away, giving the Royal Air Force plenty of time to get its night fighters into the air and on to the attack.
Ironically, radar had first been successfully demonstrated in 1934 by Rudolph Kuhnold, head of German Navy?s Signal Research Division. But five years later, at the outbreak of the war, Germany still had not produced an effective radar system- and Britain had.

NAZI STRONGHOLD THAT NEVER WAS

In the closing weeks of the Second World War the Allied drive to Berlin was interrupted by a piece of startling news, put out by Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister: that the Nazis had built a huge ?National Redoubt? on the Alpine border of Austria and Bavaria. The report was a hoax. But as intelligence chief warned in March 1945 when the news was passed to General Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied supreme commander, details of the fortress, if true, were too alarming not to be taken seriously.
Under Hitler?s personal command, so the story went, armaments were being manufactured in bomb-proof factories, food and equipment stored in vast caverns, and a whole underground army trained to liberate Germany from the occupying forces. As a result of the hoax, some Allied divisions were diverted to a wasteful advance on the non-existent Redoubt, slowing the Berlin offensive and contributing to the fact that Soviet troops were the first to enter the German Capital.
?Not until the after the campaign ended?, wrote Allied commander General Omar Bradley later, ?were we to learn that this redoubt existed largely in the imagination of a few fanatical Nazis? I am astonished that we believed it as innocently as we did. But while it persisted, this legend of the Redoubt was too ominous a threat to ignore.?

FINAL CHARGE

The last full scale cavalry charge took place during the Second World War, in November 1941, a division of Mongolian cavalry thundered across no man?s land towards a German infantry division dug in near Muscino, a village not far from the Russian capital of Moscow. The attack was a disaster. About 2000 Russians died in the charge- and not a single German.

INTERNATIONAL BOOMERANG

The boomerang- the V- shaped, hardwood weapon and missile- is not exclusive to Australian Aborigines, who can kill game up to 150m away with it. Forms of boomerang were also used by the Hopi Indians of Arizona, by various northeast African tribes and by hunters in ancient Egypt.

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