86 Important Cold War Facts For The History Enthusiasts

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26The Madman Theory

The Madman Theory

During the Cold War, President Nixon devised a strategy to make the USSR think he was crazy and capable of launching nukes at any moment. It was called the "Madman Theory".


27. During the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev said to Mao Zedong that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin."


28. The US spent $20 million on a cat equipped to spy on the Soviets during the Cold War but it immediately got hit by a taxi


29. In 1983, amidst the cold war, the world was a 'Hairsbreadth from Utter Destruction', but nuclear apocalypse was prevented by a single Russian Colonel


30. A US submarine placed a wire tap on Russian undersea cables to monitor secret military communications during the Cold War, and only found the cable after a week of searching because of a sign on the shore saying "Cable Here. Do Not Anchor."


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31Ernst Thälmann Island

Ernst Thälmann Island

Cuba gifted East Germany a small island during the Cold War as a symbol of friendship. Many have claimed that the island is now the last official territory of East Germany as it was not mentioned in the Treaty which united East and West Germany in 1990


32. In 1976, during the height of the Cold War, Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected to the West taking with him the highly secretive MiG-25 fighter plane.


33. The last leader of East Germany is still alive and still, defends his former country despite serving in prison for several years over Cold War crimes


34. The illegal landing of a "mentally unstable" 19-year-old amateur pilot in the Red Square inadvertently helped lead to the fall of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War.


35. Being a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd World Country Depends on Its Cold War Orientation


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36USA and USSR Mars mission

USA and USSR Mars mission

The Soviet Union and the USA made a plan to do a joint manned mission to Mars during the cold war. The Soviets supported it, but the idea was rejected by Reagan.


37. During the Cold War, the CIA spent $3.8B to construct a ship with a 16,000ft underwater claw arm in order to retrieve a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine.


38. The Soviet Union shot down a Korean civilian 747 that unknowingly entered its airspace during the Cold War, killing all 269 passengers. This incident prompted the U.S. to make the GPS technology available for civilian use.


39. In the '60s at the height of the Cold War, the US continuously flew planes carrying nuclear bombs around the world as a precautionary measure in the event of an attack by the USSR. 5 of these planes crashed, and nuclear contamination resulted in at least 2 instances.


40. In 1945 the USSR presented the U.S. Ambassador with a carved replica of the U.S. Seal. It hung in his office for 7 years before it was discovered to have a small listening device embedded. It was one of the first "bugs" of the Cold War.


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41Closed cities

Closed cities

During the Cold War the Soviet Union had many "closed cities" restricted for foreigners and tightly controlled for citizens and that even today Russia still keeps a great number of its closed cities in the former Soviet republics.


42. NATO was never involved in any conflict until the Cold War was over. Now it's already conflict #6


43. During the Cold War, students at Stuyvesant High School built a particle accelerator in their school's basement. However, when they powered it on, it "tanked the electrical system for the building and surrounding area." greater than $10,000 were spent on the machine, but no one knows what happened to it.


44. Cold War spy satellites from the 1960s took pictures of 10,000 ancient cities and ruins in the Middle East which nobody knew existed until they were re-examined in 2014. The images were made before modern cities overran many archaeological sites.


45. During the height of the Cold War, the "missile gap" was highly exaggerated; the Soviets may have only had 4 ICBM's


46George Orwell

George Orwell

George Orwell coined the term "cold war" to describe the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.


47. During the Cold War maps distributed in the US utilized distorted map projections to make the USSR and Vietnam seem larger, closer and more "menacing."


48. Nehru rejected permanent membership for India on the UN Security Council to keep India out of Cold War politics


49. An unidentified man was found on a beach in South Australia 69 years ago. He has never been identified, in his pocket was the words "Tamam Shud" torn from a book meaning "finished" or "ended". There are theories he was a Cold War spy due to the circumstances of his death.


50. The Russian "Dead Hand" fail-deadly nuclear retaliatory system developed during the cold war is suspected to still be operational.

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