At the end of the Second World War, a captain in the United States Navy had a radical idea about the future of the American fleet.

He felt that the largest American naval vessels, especially submarines, could be powered by the newly discovered energy from nuclear fission.

His ideas and his personality

radically changed the United States Navy and how it operates.

Learn more about Hyman Rickover and the Nuclear Navy

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. So, Given the early life of Hyman Rickover, you'd never have guessed that he would achieve what he did. He was born Haim Godalia

Rickover in 1900 in what is today eastern Poland but was then part of the Russian Empire.

He was born into a poor Jewish family. His father was a tailor and migrated to the United States before his family followed him in

1906. They were fleeing both the poverty of the region and the Jewish pograms which

followed in the wake of the 1905 Russian Revolution. The family settled in the east side of

Manhattan where his father worked as a tailor but moved to Chicago in

1908.

Hyman, whose parents had Americanized and changed his name at this point, began working at the age of nine.

He graduated from high school with honors, and after he graduated, he got a job delivering telegrams for Western Union.

While he had that job, he got to know a United States

Congressman by the name of Adolf Saboth. Saboth, like Rickover, was a Jewish

immigrant from Central Europe. As Rickover's family couldn't afford to send him to college,

Saaboth nominated Rickover for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy.

Rickover became a midshipman at the Academy in 1918,

which is of note because in that year the United States was in World War I

so all of the midshipmen were considered to be on active duty.

Normally active duty doesn't begin until after they graduate but Rickover got a four-year head start, a small detail

...