10 Things You Didn’t Know About Independence Day

4. The Film Has A Creepy Hiroshima Connection

Although the military didn't offer their full support to the film, one big important army base does feature in Independence Day, adding an eerie level of realism to proceedings. In the scene when President Whitmore addresses his flying regiment before the final battle, Bill Pullman is actually stood in front of a very significant US military airplane hangar.

This hangar once housed the Enola Gay, the airship that dropped the atomic bomb on Hirsohima on 6th August 1945 in the last days of World War II. This is one heck of a coincidence, especially when you consider that President Whitmore had ordered a nuclear strike against aliens earlier on in Independence Day. If the movie were real, this would have been only the second use of nuclear power in warfare (with the first being the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

This coincidence becomes even creepier when you hear that the President's speech - as used in the finished film - was shot on 6th August 1995, fifty years to the day after the US military launched that real-life nuclear attack on Japan. This doesn't change the film at all, of course, but you'll doubtlessly remember this fact next time you're watching it.