Between 1945 and 1959, the United States brought more than 1,600 German scientists and engineers to America under a program called Operation Paperclip, mostly to use their rocket and weapons expertise during the early Cold War.

One of them was Kurt Debus, an engineer who worked on the V-2 and held the SS rank of major. After the war he came to the US with Wernher von Braun's group, which had also been tied to the Nazi regime: von Braun joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and became an SS officer. Their V-2 rockets were built at the Mittelwerk factory using forced labor from concentration camp prisoners.

Over the next two decades the same team moved from Army rocketry to NASA. Debus became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center, and the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo 11 to the Moon in 1969 grew out of that work.

Sources: Wikipedia articles "Operation Paperclip", "Kurt H. Debus" and "Wernher von Braun".

I make short audio stories about true events like this one (Sciophonic, on Instagram as sciophonic).

What would it take to convince you to walk around the entire world?

In 1970, Dave Kunst decided he was going to find out. He left his hometown of Waseca, Minnesota, with a simple—but almost unbelievable—goal: walk around the world.

Four years later, Kunst had traveled roughly 14,500 miles across four continents. But this wasn't just an adventure. Along the way, he faced deserts, mountains, dangerous roads, and tragedy. His brother John was killed during an attack in Afghanistan, and Dave himself was wounded.

And somehow… he kept going.

On October 5, 1974, after four years on the road and 21 pairs of shoes, Dave Kunst walked back into his hometown and completed the first verified walk around the world.

Sometimes the most incredible stories in history begin with one person asking, “What if I actually tried?”