File under “You Can’t Make This Shit Up”: On this date the United States Pentagon receives a proposal from the Air Force requesting funds to build a “GAY BOMB” that would turn enemy troops Gay. The proposal would not come to light until 2007 when the Sunshine Project would discover it through a Freedom of Information Act disclosure.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon. In both of the documents, the possibility was canvassed that a strong aphrodisiac could be dropped on enemy troops, ideally one which would also cause “homosexual behavior.”

The documents described the aphrodisiac weapon as “distasteful but completely non-lethal”. The “New Discoveries Needed” section of one of the documents implicitly acknowledges that no such chemicals are actually known. The reports also include many other off-beat ideas, such as spraying enemy troops with bee pheromones and then hiding numerous beehives in the combat area, and a chemical weapon that would give the enemy bad breath.

The Wright Laboratory, which had made the proposal, won the 2007 Ig-Nobel Peace Prize for “instigating research & development on a chemical weapon—the so-called ‘Gay bomb’ / ‘poof bomb’ —that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.” However, Air Force personnel contacted were not willing to attend the award ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater to accept the award in person.