A unit of 29 amphibious Sherman tanks was launched from Allied ships on D-Day (June 6, 1944), but only two made it to land. The others sank in high seas. In 2000, divers were able to locate most of these tanks on the seabed.
Princess Elizabeth, later to be crowned Queen Elizabeth II, queen of the UK, did her part for the war effort. She joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service and drove a truck.
Where radio transmitters or telephones were unavailable, the military often relied on carrier pigeons for sending emergency reports. Armies had special pigeon divisions with mobile piegeon loffs. (Note the camera attached to this carrier pigeon)!
Source: Adams, S. (2007). Eyewitness books: world war ii. New York: DK Publishing. DOI: www.dk.com
In 1974, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda came out of the jungle of the Pacific island of Lubang. He had been hiding out there for 29 years, unaware that his country had surrendered!
In 2003, a message in a bottle washed up on a beach in Sweden. It had been sent 60 years earlier by an Estonian refugee hiding on Gotska Sandoen, 95 miles away. Around 2000 refugees from the Baltic states had found safety on this island during the war.
In 1935, the British government asked engineer Robert Watson-Watt to work on a "death ray" that would destroy enemy aircraft using radio waves. Instead, Watson-Watt used radio waves to detect incoming aircraft, and "radio detection and ranging," or radar, was born!
Source: Eyewitness Books - World War II, DK Publishing, 2004