Government Facts Generator

• [Government fact 1] In 1984, a group of cannabis growers in Northern California sued the federal government, alleging they had been subject to illegal surveillance by U2 spy planes.

  Drugs, Governmentsource

• [Government fact 2] Although Switzerland never formally declared its support for either side during World War 2, it heavily aided the Nazis. Switzerland offered banking services and sold guns to the Nazis. Switzerland also interned over 100,000 mostly Allied soldiers in POW camps. At the largest of these camps, which was run by a well-known Nazi sympathizer, the conditions were so bad that most prisoners lost an average of 40 pounds during their internment. Before the war, in 1934, Swiss banking secrecy laws were strengthened to encourage Jews of Central & Eastern Europe, fearful of Nazis, to hide their assets in Swiss banks. After a majority of those depositors died during the Holocaust, the laws were used to wrongfully deny their heirs access to those accounts.

  Countries, Governmentsource

• [Government fact 3] Anchorage, Alaska has 500 police officers and there are only 800 police officers total in the other 661,000 square miles of Alaska.

  Government, Placessource

• [Government fact 4] In the early ‘80s, the CIA helped facilitate the widespread sale of cocaine in poor Los Angeles neighborhoods to help finance the covert war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Gary Webb, the reporter from the San Jose Mercury News who first broke the story of CIA involvement in the cocaine trade, was found dead with “two gunshot wounds to the head.” His death, in 2004, was ruled a suicide.

  Drugs, Governmentsource

• [Government fact 5] In 1954, shortly after the 15 megaton Castle Bravo nuclear explosion, Edward Teller, the "father of the H-bomb," proposed a new weapon known as the SUNDIAL. Its explosive yield was proposed to be 10,000 megatons or 10 gigatons. To put it into perspective, the largest bomb ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, could at its maximum yield have been 100 megatons. The SUNDIAL would have been 100x more powerful than the Tsar Bomba and could scorch an area the size of France or Texas. The project was axed by the Air Force.

  Government, Weaponssource

• [Government fact 6] The University of Paris existed for 820 years from 1150 AD to 1970, when it was broken up for being the main source of student revolutionaries who nearly overthrew the French government in May 1968.

  Government, Placessource

• [Government fact 7] The idea that the federal government can regulate almost any business was established in a 1942 Supreme Court case. Since a farmer could theoretically sell produce over state lines, the US government had the authority to control what he could grow.

  Food, Government, Placessource

• [Government fact 8] The first act of the United Kingdom's State Opening of Parliament is to check the cellars to ensure that it doesn’t have any bombs in it. This is a tradition that has been carried out without fail after the original failed gunpowder plot of 1605.

  Government, Weaponssource

• [Government fact 9] The parliament of Iceland, the Althing, is the oldest surviving parliament in the world, having been founded in 930.

  Countries, Governmentsource

• [Government fact 10] Operation Northwoods was a plan proposed by CIA to commit genuine acts of terrorism on the U.S. soil, going as far as paint MiG jets in Cuban colors and markings to conduct some of these attacks and blame it on Cuba, to create public support for a war against the nation, which had recently become communist under Fidel Castro. John F Kennedy rejected this proposal and removed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  Crime, Governmentsource

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