In 1942 Los Angeles fired 1,440 anti-aircraft rounds at nothing

On February twenty-fifth, nineteen forty-two, air raid sirens wailed across Los Angeles. Panicked by the still-fresh memory of Pearl Harbor, military commanders ordered a blackout and opened fire into the pre-dawn sky. Over one thousand four hundred anti-aircraft rounds were unleashed. But when dawn broke, there was no enemy aircraft—no target at all. According to Boing Boing, this bizarre incident remains one of World War Two's strangest military episodes, a night when Los Angeles emptied its guns at nothing.

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