Country Profile: 60 Facts & Figures About Mother Russia

In 1991, a fake Russian TV program convinced many citizens that Lenin consumed a lot of psychedelic mushrooms, eventually even becoming a mushroom himself. The Leningrad Communist Party responded that “Lenin could not have been a mushroom because a mammal cannot be a plant.”

52. Grigori Perelman, a Russian mathematician, successfully proved the Poincaré conjecture (one of the seven Millennium problems) in papers made available in 2002 and 2003. When his work survived review, he was offered a Fields Medal and the $1,000,000 Millennium Prize, both of which he turned down

53. During 9/11, the Russian government canceled military exercises in the North Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans, in order to avoid provoking the US, which had raised its military alert readiness to DEFCON 3.

54. A 1999 Russian book named The Last Ringbearer re-tells Lord of The Rings from Sauron’s perspective with Gandalf and the fellowship as the villains.

55. In the late 1910's during some Russian civil war, there was a group of Czechoslovakians trapped in Russia who needed to get back home. However, battle lines were drawn directly over the path home west and neither side liked them. So they decided to go east instead since the world is round. There were a lot of them and their revolt brought down Bolshevik power across the entire Siberia and them for some time controlled the entire Trans-Siberian railroad. Once they made it to the Pacific Ocean by train they got a boat and sailed to the States. From there they trekked across America, sailed to Europe, and headed straight back to Czechoslovakia. This took about 1.5 years.

At a sound check before the address, Ronald Reagan made the following joke to the radio technicians: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

57. 48 countries including the US and Russia have signed an international treaty that bans the use of weather control in times of war.

58. Harald Hadrada, a Viking who fled from his native Norway to Russia, then went on to become an elite guardsman in Eastern Roman Empire and fought in Iraq. He then went back to Russia to marry a princess and arrived back in Norway as a king, and finally invaded England with his army.

59. Mark Spitz, nine-time Olympic champion, jokingly told the Russian swim team coach in 1972 that his mustache increased his speed in the water, deflecting water away from his mouth. The next year, every Russian swimmer was sporting one.

60. Russians have built an anti-ship cruise missile that is meant to be fired in groups of about 8. On the way to the target, they all fly very low to hide from radar, except one. One will fly higher up, acting as a spotter and guide and use its radar to look for ships and will guide the others. If it is destroyed (because it flying higher and easier to detect) another missile in the group will rise up and take over the role of guide. And if it is destroyed another and so on. The guiding missile will also make an assessment of the targets if it finds multiple ships, prioritizes and then designate the targets for the other missiles. If a ship is destroyed it will reassign targets. They were designed to take out carrier task forces. They’ve been operational since 1985. Basically, the Russians have had suicidal, swarming, co-operating drones for thirty years.