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Lesser Known Facts About World War II

Khalid Elhassan November 4, 2019 28 min

Operation Jericho - de Havilland Mosquito — Mosquitoes during Operation Jericho. Swa Fine Art

2. Spartacus Almost Got Killed in WWII

Kirk Douglas caught the acting bug in kindergarten when he recited a poem, and reveled in the audience’s applause. He was unable to afford college, so he talked the dean of St. Lawrence University’s drama program into letting him attend in exchange for working on campus as a janitor and gardener. After graduation, Douglas got into stage acting, and had barely started getting himself established in the theater, when WWII broke out. He tried to join the Army Air Forces, but when the airmen turned him down, he joined the Navy in late 1941.

Douglas attended the US Navy’s midshipman school in Notre Dame, and upon graduation, he was commissioned an ensign. He was sent to the Pacific Theater, where he served as a communications officer aboard USS PC-1137, a submarine chaser. He spent most of 1942 and 1943 hunting Japanese submarines, and while doing that, Douglas suffered severe internal injuries when a depth charge exploded prematurely. He spent months in a hospital, before he was medically discharged in 1944.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.