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

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26Molten salt reactor

Molten salt reactor

A molten-salt reactor, a piece of technology conceived during the Cold War that forgoes solid nuclear fuel for a liquid one, can generate energy with far greater efficiency than any power technology in existence.


27. The Cold War is credited to have started in Canada after a Soviet Cipher Clerk defected to Canada and revealed Stalin's attempts to steal nuclear secrets.


28. Sidney Shachnow walked 2,000 miles for six months across Europe to escape a Nazi concentration camp, joined the US Army, volunteered for the Green Berets in Vietnam, served in a clandestine unit of cold war commandos, received a master's and doctoral degree and attained the rank of Maj. General.


29. The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc.


30. Gorbachev, the guy who pretty much ended the cold war, made a children music CD with Bill Clinton and won a Grammy for it


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31The Stroop Effect

The Stroop Effect

The Stroop effect (e.g. the printed word "blue" colored in red) was used to help detect Russian spies during the Cold War.


32. 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".


33. 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."


34. 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


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


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36Operation Ivy Bells

Operation Ivy Bells

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."


37. 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


38. 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.


39. 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


40. 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.


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411st, 2nd, or 3rd World

1st, 2nd, or 3rd World

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


42. 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.


43. 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.


44. 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.


45. 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.


46Carved Replica of the US Seal

Carved Replica of the US Seal

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.


47. 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.


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


49. 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.


50. 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.

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