89 Silent Facts About The Cold War Few Americans and Russians Know

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1Google maps

Google maps

Because of cold war regulations, every street in China is in slightly the wrong place on Google Maps.


2. The Soviet Union and the United States were originally in talks to go to the moon together during the Cold War. Nikita Khruschev was poised to accept the plan but then President Kennedy was assassinated. The Soviets did not trust Vice President Johnson, so Khrushchev rejected the plan.


3. Nuclear bombers from the Cold War were typically painted white or with a white underside to reflect light from the nuclear blast it would deliver, the paint is called "anti-flash white"


4. Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion


5. Teddy Roosevelt’s grandsons, Archie (spoke 16 languages) and Kim were high-level CIA operatives in the early days of the Cold War.


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6Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

During the Cold War, Chairman Mao held meetings in his swimming pool to embarrass Nikola Khrushchev, who had to wear a floaty as he couldn’t swim. Khrushchev felt insulted and the incident furthered the deterioration of relations between the Soviet Union and China.


7. During the Cold War, the USSR was able to tell a Soviet passport was a forgery because the staples in real passports would corrode due to the poor quality of metal.


8. The US ignored war crime charges against many Nazis and recruited them in their cold war efforts.


9. Russia secretly had maps so detailed of the Canadian Arctic during the Cold-War that other ships now use them over official maps.


10. Congress added the "Under God" phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance during the Cold War. This symbolized the resistance to communists, who were atheists.


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11Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr

1930's starlet Hedy Lamarr invented a new technology to stop Nazi's from jamming Navy torpedoes, but the idea was rejected until 1962 and implemented during the Cold War. Her frequency hopping technology is also the basis for modern Bluetooth.


12. From the 30s to the end of the Cold War, MI5 had an officer working at the BBC to ensure they wouldn't hire communists.


13. The most successful intelligence operation (Operation Tamarisk) in the Cold War was emptying supplies of Soviet Union toilet paper, forcing them to use documents, and retrieving these documents after use.


14. During the Cold War, the US considered airdropping enormous condoms labeled “Medium” onto the Soviets, to demoralize them against an anatomically superior American Army.


15. During the Cold War, Chrysler built air raid sirens powered by V8 engines. They produced 138dB, could be heard for 16 miles and remain the loudest sirens ever built.


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16Radioactive sensitive steel

Radioactive sensitive steel

Because of Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Cold War Testing, the steel used for radioactive-sensitive purposes must be harvested from pre-WWII naval vessels: modern steel production is all tainted with radioactivity


17. The US Air Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might at the height of the Cold War. The mathematical modeling for the explosion was done by Carl Sagan.


18. The height of the Cold War the titanium used in building the legendary SR-71 Blackbird was sourced by the CIA (via dummy companies) from the completely oblivious the Soviet Union.


19. The CIA secretly spiked the bread from a bakery in the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit with enormous quantities of LSD as part of its cold war mind-control experiments.


20. During the Cold War America used bears to test their ejector seats in supersonic jets.


21Ping pong diplomacy

Ping pong diplomacy

A friendly exchange between an American and Chinese player in the 1971 World Ping-Pong Championship prompted Mao Zedong to invite the American table tennis to China, helping re-open Sino-American relations for the first time since the cold war.


22. In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, the US military launched a ring of 480 million needles into orbit around the earth. It was hoped they would more reliably bounce radio signals back to earth in case the Soviets cut through undersea cables. Multiple clumps of these needles are still up there


23. The Third World was so named during the Cold War to describe countries not aligned with the US or USSR and had nothing to do with poverty


24. The Canadian government forcibly relocated Inuit to the most northern parts of the country during the Cold War in order to assert its sovereignty in the area


25. The Soviets gave the offspring of one of their space dogs to JFK’s daughter Caroline during the Cold War in 1961, which went on to have pups with an American dog that JFK jokingly dubbed ‘pupniks’

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