Obscure facts. Forgotten heroes. Heartfelt stories that history almost forgot — but we won't.
Staff Sergeant Lomell's story of scaling the cliffs and finding the missing guns
● Pointe du Hoc, Normandy Normandy & D-DayWhat veterans told their grandchildren — oral histories transcribed 2000-2015
● Omaha & Utah Beach, Normandy Normandy & D-DayThe civilian who walked toward the Americans on D-Day morning
● Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Normandy Forgotten HeroesHow one medic saved 75 men without ever touching a weapon
● Okinawa, Pacific Theater Amazing True StoriesThe war correspondent's unpublished pages — the stories he couldn't print
● Various locations, European and Pacific theatersAnswer: The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, activated June 1, 1944, was a secret unit of artists, actors, sound engineers, and advertising men who used inflatable rubber tanks, fake radio traffic, recorded sounds of armored battalions, and fabricated military camps to simulate entire divisions.
Answer: Miep Gies was the 23-year-old Dutch secretary who hid Anne Frank and seven others in the Secret Annex for 25 months. After the annex was raided, she collected Anne's scattered diary pages and locked them in her desk, hoping to return them after the war.
Answer: Calvin Graham was 12 years old when he enlisted using a forged birth certificate. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS South Dakota and was only discovered after being wounded in the naval battle of Guadalcanal.
Diplomat in Lithuania
Saved 6,000 Jewish refugees by issuing unauthorized transit visas by hand for 29 consecutive days.
BritishStockbroker and humanitarian
Rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia and kept it secret for 49 years.
AmericanCombat Medic, 77th Infantry Division
A conscientious objector who saved 75 men on Hacksaw Ridge without ever carrying a weapon.
The Fu-Go balloon bombs nearly hit the Hanford nuclear facility, where the plutonium for the atomic bomb was being produced.
9,000 Japanese balloon bombs crossed the Pacific to attack America. Only 6 people died — a woman and 5 children on a picnic near Bly, Oregon, May 5, 1945.
PFC Desmond Doss prayed before each rescue run on Hacksaw Ridge. He said God told him which wounded men to reach first and in what order.
Operation Cornflakes: OSS agents forged German postage stamps reading "Futsches Reich" (Ruined Empire) and slipped forged anti-Nazi letters into the real German postal system.