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

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

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

53. 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."

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

55. 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.

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

57. During the Cold War, the RCMP developed and used a "fruit machine" which measured pupil dilation in relation to pictures of men and women to determine whether someone was gay.

58. Hitler predicted the Cold War. "there will remain in the world only two Great Powers capable of confronting each other the United States and Soviet Russia."

59. The US government had a plan to nuke the moon during the Cold War to intimidate the Soviets

60. During the Cold War, CIA agents used a method of communication-based on how their shoelaces were tied.

During the Cold War, a Czechoslovakian pilot hijacked his own plane, claimed asylum in West Germany, and ended up a commercial pilot for Continental Airlines.

62. During the Cold War, a Soviet Navy officer named Vasili Arkhipov prevented Nuclear War by being the only one of three officers aboard the nuclear-armed B-59 to deny the launch of nuclear torpedos, as a unanimous decision of all three officers was needed to launch.

63. Chef Boyardee was awarded the Order of Lenin by the USSR for supplying rations to the Red Army. However, he was unable to accept the award, due to the impending Cold War.

64. 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.

65. During the height of the Cold War, the combination authorizing nuclear missile launch was "00000000."

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

67. 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.

68. During the Cold War, Ted Turner made a videotape to be played on CNN in the event of the end of the world.

69. Cold War defense computers had ashtrays

70. 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.

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

72. The CIA funded Creative-Writing Programs during the Cold War to promote American Exceptionalism & fight "Communist Ideals."

73. 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

74. 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.

75. There was a Cold War Bunker Found in the Brooklyn Bridge.