It is a little-known fact that the first man-made object to reach space was a Nazi weapon.

The Vergeltungswaffe 2, or Vengeance Weapon 2, was the brainchild of German-born engineer Wernher von Braun, who later became instrumental in the U.S. space program during the Cold War.

Prisoners of war were forced to build the V-2 missiles under precarious conditions, and more people lost their lives during the manufacturing process than with the actual firing of the rocket towards the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium.

However, in June of 1944, a V-2 missile launched from what was then Germany’s Baltic Coast reached a suborbital altitude of 108.5 miles.

What constitutes international airspace boundaries is still debated to this day, but there is no question that many Nazi inventions had a significant influence in the Space Race and even in modern outer space technology…