1945 History, Trivia and Fun Facts

• Politics: President Harry S Truman had no Vice President during his entire first term April 12, 1945 - January 20, 1949 after FDR's death.
• Influential Songs include: Till The End of Time by Perry Como, Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?) by Billie Holiday and There! I've Said It Again by Vaughn Monroe
• The Big Movies included Mom and Dad, Spellbound and The Bells of Saint Mary's
• Minimum Wage in 1945: 40 cents per hour
• A Peninese male pubby, AKC registered: $60.00
• The World Population was ~ 2,466,000,000
• And... Betty Lou Oliver had a bad day on July 28, 1945. First a B-25 Mitchell airplane hit the Empire State Building, while she was in the elevator, which then fell 80 floors. She broke a few bones and had other injuries, but survived. This descent still stands as the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall ever recorded.

On May 6, 1945, Chuck Norris was born, on May 7, 1945, the Nazis surrendered.

Assuming the population of the world in 1945 is correct at around 2.7 billion, 3% of the world was killed in World War II.

The US government produced 500,000 Purple Heart medals to prepare for the 1945 invasion of Japan. When the operation never took place, the medals were placed in storage and distributed. All military action since then still has not depleted the supply - there are over 100,000 in storage.

70 scientists who worked in the Manhattan project signed a petition pleading for president Truman to delay using atomic weapons on Japan before considering an observed demonstration of its power, but it never made it to Truman before the bombings.

Since 1945, all British tanks have come equipped with tea making facilities.

General Dwight D. Einsenhower predicted that people would try to dispel the holocaust as a falsehood, and ordered innumerable pictures to be taken of the Nazi crimes to hinder any such attempts.

During World War II, future US President Dwight D. Einsenhower predicted that people would try to deny the holocaust ever happened, and therefore ordered people to take as much photographs of the Nazi crimes as possible in order to avoid such attempts.

Tommy Tucker was a squirrel that wore women's clothes and performed tricks to sell war bonds in WW2.

Hajimi Fuji, who volunteered for the kamikaze but was refused acceptance because he had a wife and two young children. To honour his wish his wife drowned her two young girls and drowned herself. Hajimi then flew as a kamikaze pilot,meeting his death on the 28th May 1945.

900 Japanese soldiers were forced to retreat through 10 miles of mangrove swamp, during which hundreds were to be eaten by the thousands of saltwater crocodiles lying wait, in what is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the "Worst crocodile disaster in the world".

Boston Red Sox player Ted Williams who missed almost five full baseball seasons fighting as a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War and still managed to hit 521 home runs.

On July 28th, a US B-25 bomber accidentally hit the Empire State Building in New York. 14 people were killed.

The Russian and American troops never met during the WWII, except once in a town called Torgau along the Elbe River, on April 25, 1945.

Eddie Slovik, a Private executed for desertion during WW2 in 1945, was the first American soldier to be executed for desertion since the American Civil War.

Days after Hitler's suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division. This was the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II.

On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito, in his radio announcement declaring the country's capitulation to the Allies in WWII, never used the word "surrender" or "defeat" but instead stated that the "war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." It was the first time his voice was heard by the Japanese people.

Bob Barker was trained as a Navy fighter pilot in WW2, but wasn't sent to a fleet squadron in time to fight. He once said: "I was all ready to go, and when the enemy heard that I was headed for the Pacific, they surrendered. That was the end of World War II."

The Kyuiu Incident: The Japanese Army staged a (failed) coup d'etat against Emperor Hirohito to prevent him from surrendering to the Americans at the end of World War Two.

An Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II, Hiroo Onoda, did not surrender in 1945. In 1974 his former commander traveled from Japan to personally issue orders relieving him from duty. Onoda had spent almost 30 years holding out in the Philippines.

Dutch people have adopted the graves of American WWII soldiers buried at Margraten, Netherlands. They visit regularly with flowers and graves are passed to the next generation. There is a waiting list to adopt a grave.

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