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When the attack on Pearl Harbor began, Doris "Dorie" Miller was working laundry duty on the USS West Virginia.

He'd enlisted in the Navy at age 19 to explore life outside of Waco, Texas, and to make some extra money for his family. But the Navy was segregated at the time, so Miller, an African-American, and other sailors of color like him weren't allowed to serve in combat positions. Instead, they worked as cooks, stewards, cabin boys, and mess attendants. They received no weapons training and were prohibited from firing guns.

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102-year-old woman discovers that she's a surviving member of special WWII unit

Crescensia Garcia is getting the recognition she deserves.

CBS Mornings/YouTube

A 102-year-old woman's family learned something about her past military service thanks to Twitter.

You never know when you have a legend in your family. Two years ago, a woman named Tara Garcia reached out to "CBS Mornings" correspondent David Begnaud to share a story. Her grandmother, Crescensia Garcia, had just turned 100 and had recently survived COVID-19, only having to briefly use oxygen. Begnaud shared the story of the elder Ms. Garcia with his followers on Twitter, including some pictures Tara had sent him. Little did they know, a bigger story was about to unfold.

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File:Hedy lamarr - 1940.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

This article originally appeared on 11.09.15


Hedy Lamarr was a movie star, and a total hot commodity in Hollywood. If you look around the Internet, you'll find lots of images of her makin' out with famous dudes from the '40s.


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But Lamarr was also an incredible inventor.

She had a room in her house that was dedicated to tinkering, inventing, and just figuring out whatever she wanted!

She once said, "All creative people want to do the unexpected."

Let's be real: It was the 1940s, and no one was expecting a famous movie starlet to up and invent a torpedo radio system with the goal of fighting the Germans during World War II. But she did!

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In the autumn of 1939, Chiune Sugihara was sent to Lithuania to open the first Japanese consulate there. His job was to keep tabs on and gather information about Japan's ally, Germany. Meanwhile, in neighboring Poland, Nazi tanks had already begun to roll in, causing Jewish refugees to flee into the small country.

When the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania in June of 1940, scores of Jews flooded the Japanese consulate, seeking transit visas to be able to escape to a safety through Japan. Overwhelmed by the requests, Sugihara reached out to the foreign ministry in Tokyo for guidance and was told that no one without proper paperwork should be issued a visa—a limitation that would have ruled out nearly all of the refugees seeking his help.

Sugihara faced a life-changing choice. He could obey the government and leave the Jews in Lithuania to their fate, or he could disobey orders and face disgrace and the loss of his job, if not more severe punishments from his superiors.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Sugihara was fond of saying, "I may have to disobey my government, but if I don't, I would be disobeying God." Sugihara decided it was worth it to risk his livelihood and good standing with the Japanese government to give the Jews at his doorstep a fighting chance, so he started issuing Japanese transit visas to any refugee who needed one, regardless of their eligibility.

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