Army Facts
23 of 43 U.S. Presidents have served in the U.S. Army, 19 of which served in a time of war, two of them achieved five-star rank, one of them earned the Medal of Honor.
Less than 28% of Americans between the ages of 17-23 are qualified for military service - Army Soldiers are more intelligent, better educated, in better shape, vote more and have a far less rate of criminal activity than their civilian counter-parts.
Less than 1 in 1400 Americans is an active commissioned officer in the Armed Forces.
The Army is older than the United States of America, the National Guard dating back to 1637 and the Regular Army back to 14 June, 1775.
The U.S. States Army was in charge of exploring and mapping America, the Lewis and Clark Expedition being an all Army affair. Army officers were the first Americans to see such landmarks as Pike's Peak and the Grand Canyon.
The Army founded the United States weather service in 1878 and ran it for 12 years before turning the mission over to civilian control.
The Army Corps of Topographical Engineers was the forerunner of the U.S. Geological Survey, the primary civilian mapping agency of the federal government.
The U.S. Air Force was part of the Army until 1946. Such Air Force Legends as Billy Mitchell, Carl Spaatz, Curtis LeMay and Jimmy Doolittle were actually Army officers and all the legendary missions of WWII (Ploesti, Schweinfurt, Doolittle's Tokyo Raid, etc) were Army operations.
The National Guard is the nation's 911 force of choice, executing hundreds of domestic humanitarian relief operations each year - hurricanes, floods, wildfires, riots, etc. The Army moved nearly 60,000 Soldiers to the Gulf Coast last year in 7 days while simultaneously fighting two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Army successfully occupied, reformed and rebuilt Japan and Germany after World War II, bringing democracy to two major countries with a history of tyranny, aggression and ultra-nationalism. Army lawyers helped write the constitutions of these two countries.
The Army Corps of Engineers is the nation's engineering firm, doing over five billion dollars of construction work for the nation in 2006. The Corps is responsible for maintaining all of the nation's harbors and waterways. The Corps is also responsible for nearly 300 dams and produces 25% of the nation's hydro-electric power. U.S. Army engineers oversaw construction of the Panama Canal, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Washington Monument to just name a few projects.
West Point is the nation's oldest school of engineering.
U.S. Army doctors are world leaders in the fields of disease control, treating burn victims, trauma surgery and orthopedics. U.S. Army Medical Corps' doctors conducted the first operation in the U.S. under anesthesia and perfected techniques to control both yellow fever and malaria. U.S. Army training programs for Physicians Assistants and Nurse Anesthetists are national ranked. US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) is a world recognized leader in the study of infectious diseases.
The U.S. Army was instrumental in the implementation of various Civil Rights Legislation and were deployed through-out the South in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably to Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957 and the University of Alabama in 1963.
