1Soldier's diet was on explosives
During the cold war, the Soviets would feed their soldiers an explosive feedstock as a dietary supplement to keep them warm.
2. During the cold war, America sent Romania 20,000 Bibles, which the Romanians subsequently turned into toilet paper because they had a shortage.
3. Project Pluto was a cold war era program to develop a nuclear-powered ramjet cruise missile which would have an unlimited range. One of its drawbacks was that it would spew fission material as exhaust.
4. 750,000 bunkers were built in Albania during the Cold War one for every four inhabitants. They were a drain on the economy and almost never used.
5. During the Cold War, most records were banned in the Soviet Union. This spawned an era of bootlegging in which the music was recorded onto x-rays films and smuggled in.
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6Greatest man-made light show
During the height of the cold war, the US launched a hydrogen bomb into space resulting in the "greatest man-made light show.."
7. During the Cold War, MI5 planned to use gerbils at airports to help detect terrorists, secret agents, and subversives.
8. The US developed a portable recoilless gun for firing a small nuke 2-4km during the Cold War
9. During the cold war, Urho Kekkonen (the former president of Finland) negotiated with Soviet officials in the sauna, raising the temperature until he got what he wanted.
10. Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech that first recognized the Cold War was delivered to a college in Missouri in 1946. Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech there in 1992, declaring the end of the Cold War.
11Zheleznogorsk city
During the Cold War, the secret city of Zheleznogorsk made plutonium for atom bombs. One reactor generated heat and electricity for the local populations and could not be turned off. So it continued to produce enough plutonium to make a new bomb every three days until it was shut down in 2010.
12. During the Cold War, the federal government planned for a scenario known as Plan C, which would have instituted martial law, arrested those connected to “subversive” organizations, implemented a censorship board, and prepared the country for life after nuclear attack. There was no Plan A or B.
13. Due to Cold War A-Bomb attack fears, some school children in NW Indiana were given blood-type tattoos as a "walking blood bank" program
14. There was a Cold War Bunker Found in the Brooklyn Bridge.
15. In 1987 Lynne Cox swam from the United States to The Soviet Union (Little Diomede in Alaska to Big Diomede) and in the process eased Cold War tensions.
16Pilots wore an eye patch
During the Cold War, the pilots of a special US airborne command center were each required to wear an eye patch at DEFCON 2 or below preserving at least one eye in case of surprise nuclear flash
17. The CIA funded Creative-Writing Programs during the Cold War to promote American Exceptionalism & fight "Communist Ideals."
18. Fidel Castro and 500,000 Cubans took part in Cold War proxy and anti-Colonialism wars in Africa, leading to independence of Guinea, Mozambique, and Angola from Portuguese rule
19. The US Army conducted tests for a biological weapons program during the Cold War on impoverished St. Louis neighborhoods. Results were giving cancer to its own citizens.
20. Cold War defense computers had ashtrays
21Ted Turner
During the Cold War, Ted Turner made a videotape to be played on CNN in the event of the end of the world.
22. In order to prove the effectiveness of the A10 Warthog to the Air Force, the designers acquired over 300 Russian tanks from all over the world to create a mock Cold War battle scenario in the Nevada desert.
23. In 1959 as the Cold War was underway, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was denied entry into Disneyland on a trip to the US, having to settle for SeaWorld
24. During the height of the Cold War, the combination authorizing nuclear missile launch was "00000000."
25. The closest the world came to full-scale nuclear war was not during Cuban Missile Crisis or even the during Cold War, but instead, it was when a scientific rocket was mistaken as an American ICBM in 1995.
