40 Highly Unsettling Details About World War II That Most Textbooks Leave Out

3. The Death Ray

Wellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-31)/Wikimedia Commons

The atomic bomb ended World War II, but that wasn’t the only unusual weapon that government scientists were developing in the 1940s. Japan sought to build a “death ray” that would send out lethal electric waves at enemy forces. This sci-fi invention didn’t pan out — but it wasn’t the only unconventional idea on the Axis side.