In 1942, the USS Lexington, the second-largest aircraft carrier in the Navy at the time, was sunk by Japanese torpedoes and bombs during the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Before abandoning ship, sailors grabbed all the ice cream they could. Some scooped it into their helmets before lowering themselves into the water.
This weird food fact, and plenty more like it, can be found in “The Secret History of Food,” by Matt Siegel, which came out last week. I happen to like weird food facts, and so the book was right up my alley (despite its frequent rambling and its tendency to veer off into angry screeds about modern society).
