Interesting Question of the Day – 31 October 2018
Carrots DON’T make you see better in the dark.
But why did British authorities promote the idea that they DID make you see better?
The first new player to comment on the website with the correct answer wins a free drink at their next iQ Trivia show.
It was made up as a reason for why one side could see in the dark. They actually had night vision goggles 😛
That’s close, but not quite.
It wasn’t night vision, not literally, but it was a lie made up to cover up another technological advance they had made.
By 1941 the British night fighters had a rudimentary radar which enabled them to shoot down the German bombers, and they didn’t want the Luftwaffe to know about it and develop countermeasures. Later (1943) they had developed a shorter (about 3 cm.) wavelength radar (Designated H2S because Churchill raised a stink about them being so slow getting it into action) used for finding surfaced U Boats and getting good images of German countryside during bombing missions. That also took the Germans quite a while to figure out.
And that’s why they made up the lie about carrots.