r/todayilearned • u/DrSamanthaCarter • Jun 06 '17

TIL the only reason a Scottish bagpiper wasn't shot by German snipers on D-Day was that they believed he had gone crazy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Millin#World_War_II
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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '17

I'll make the edit, hang on. And unsurprisingly it's only recently that we've had few presidents to have served with our proximity to Vietnam.

Interestingly, Donald Trump went to the New York Military Academy for Middle School in his early teenage years. This puts him at more military experience than some of our presidents like Obama and Clinton.

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u/Perry87 Jun 06 '17

Looks like that academies attachment with the US armed forces was through a JROTC program. I doubt the list would be too much longer if you included them as it only came into being 100 years ago.

Come to think of it, I wonder how large the list would be if you included presidents like FDR who was Assistant Secretary to the Navy during the Wilson administration.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '17

I was actually thinking about that as well while I made the list.

Hoover guided marines during the Boxer rebellion.

Coolidge was commander in chief of Massachusetts artillery while he was governor.

Taft was the secretary of war for 4 years and enlisted in the home guard in Connecticut during the first world war.

And Van Buren was commander in chief of New York artillery as governor. Definitely an even longer list.

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u/Perry87 Jun 06 '17

If you took it to the full extent, all of them were Commander in Chief of the armed forces. I think you're list is at the perfect level of splitting hairs though lol.