20 Amazing Cold War Facts That Might You Never Know

The United States and the Soviet Union were good friends During World War II, Both fighting together against the Axis powers. However, the U.S. was worried about communism and the despotic Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. To put it bluntly, America feared that the commies as it liked to say would take over the world. For that reason, the U.S. wanted to contain communist expansionism. But the Soviets were building an arms stockpile of arms, including atomic weapons. In this way, a weapons contest was in transit. It’s an idea, Bernard Mannes Baruch, an American agent, and multimillionaire authored the term Cold War, which fundamentally implies war without military activity.

#20

Bernard Mannes was a rich man and also an advisor to all U.S. presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman. He’s famous for saying this: “Let us not be deceived. We are today in the midst of a Cold War. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success.” 49. It was Winston Churchill who first used the term, “Iron Curtain” in relation to the Cold War, which basically means the metaphorical divide between the Soviet bloc and the West.

#19

Stalin wasn’t really named Stalin. He was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, but that doesn’t really have a cool ring to it. He changed his name to Stalin ‘cos it means Man of Steel. Superman’s currently rolling over in his grave. 45. The Cold War started under American president Harry Truman and ended while George Bush Sr. was in power. If you were around in 1989, you might have read the headline, “Bush and Gorbachev suggest Cold War is coming to an end.”

#18

Chinese Communist Party leader, Mao Zedong, had been treated badly by the Soviets on many occasions. He got his own back, though, when he met Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Mao loved swimming, and he had learned that Khrushchev couldn’t swim. On one visit, the latter was met by Mao, who offered him some bathing shorts. He took Khrushchev to a private swimming pool. According to The Smithsonian, “Khrushchev, meanwhile, stood uncomfortably in the children’s end of the pool until Mao, with more than a touch of malice, suggested that he join him in the deeper water.” The embarrassed Soviet leader needed a floatation device and apparently paddled like a dog. Mao was a happy man. Some years later, Khrushchev said, “It was Mao’s way of putting himself in an advantageous position.”

#17

In 1951, there was a mass poisoning in a French town called Pont-Saint-Esprit. People died, but others suffered from scary hallucinations and ended up in the madhouse. It was said to be something in the bread. There are many theories about what happened, and one is that the CIA spiked the bread with massive amounts of LSD as part of its MKNAOMI chemical warfare program. Writing about the incident of what became known as the “cursed bread,” the Telegraph newspaper said, “One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: ‘I am a plane’ before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs.” CIA 1 France 0.

#16

It’s actually sometimes said that the Cold War started in Canada. That’s because a soviet cipher clerk named Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko defected there just after WWII and handed over 109 documents relating to Soviet espionage and future plans. Some of those plans, of course, were to build massive bombs.

#15

According to the BBC, during the Cold War, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and US President John F Kennedy wrote each other lots of letters. They even sent each other gifts. One such gift was given to Kennedy’s daughter. It was a dog called Pushinka, who was the offspring of one of the Soviet space dogs. It, in turn, had puppies which JFK called the pupniks.

#14

If you check out recently released secret files from the National Archive, there’s a conversation with the CIA director in 1975 and an attorney. The attorney asks, “Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent. . .” But mysteriously, that’s where the document ends.

#13

The British satirical puppet show “Spitting Image” showed Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev with what looked like a hammer and sickle painted on his forehead. It’s actually a port-wine stain, a discoloration of the skin.

#12

During the Cold War, the Americans devised a cunning plan. They would portray President Nixon as crazy, so crazy he might press that red button at any time and start a nuclear war. They called this “The Madman Theory.” The theory was that if they could make someone look so volatile, then other countries wouldn’t provoke the U.S. Some media now say Donald Trump uses the madman theory, or at least it looks like that.

#11

The USA spent 20 million dollars on a cat We should probably just leave you to think about that But we won’t. Called the acoustic kitty, this cat was designed to spy on Soviets, as it had a listening device implanted in its ear canal. On its first mission to spy on two gents in a Soviet Compound in the US, it got hit by a taxi and died. Some people refute this and say the cat was just useless. Either way, it’s amusing if you don’t pay taxes in the U.S. Declassified documents show how the CIA resigned themselves to failure, stating that spying cats were just not practical.

#10

In 2017, the New York Times wrote a story about a man who had just died at 77. His name was Stanislav Petrov and it was a decision he made that saved us from an all-out nuclear war. In 1983, his missile early warning system informed him that the U.S. had launched 5 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles at Russia. The protocol was an immediate retaliatory strike, but the man just couldn’t believe it was real. And it wasn’t, the machine was malfunctioning. “Twenty-three minutes later, I realized that nothing had happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief,” he told the press.

#9

This is the first line of an article in The Guardian, “If you were born before October 27th, 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov saved your life.” At the height of the cold war, during the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviets were about to strike with nuclear weapons. They believed America was about to strike a submarine with a nuclear weapon and so the giant USS Randolph became the target for a ten kiloton nuclear torpedo. You need three high-ranking officers to launch, and Arkhipov said no. It turned out the U.S. wasn’t thinking about its own launch. Phew.

#8

In the 60s in the USA, planes would fly around all the time carrying nuclear bombs. This was a ‘just-in-case’ scenario. 5 of these planes with the bombs on board crashed. That included a B-52 that crashed in North Carolina in 1961, and it was carrying two 3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs. Two people died, but you won’t have heard about it. This was classified information. And little did North Carolina residents know, that the bombs almost detonated…Do you think they would have blamed Russia?

#7

In 1959, Soviet Premier Khrushchev wanted to take his family to visit Disneyland when he was visiting the U.S. He found out he was barred. The State Department was later apologetic, saying he could take his family another day to see Mickey Mouse and co. The U.S said the reason for the snub was only because of safety reasons. Soviet leaders weren’t exactly popular in the states in those days. Putin didn’t go either; he just made his own version of Disneyland in Russia.

#6

In 1983 Korean Airlines Flight 007 was on its way from New York to Seoul. It didn’t get there because the Soviets shot it down, killing all 269 passengers and crew. It was thought to have been a spy plane, but it was just a regular old 747 carrying mostly vacation-goers. This created a lot of anti-Soviet sentiment around the world.

#5

If you look at the CIA field agent training manual from the 50s, you’ll find the secret CIA shoelace code. This showed how you could tie your laces in certain ways to tell someone something. It might mean I have some information or keep following me.

#4

During the cold war, U.S. air force pilots were given eye patches. They were told that a nuclear explosion would blind them and make flying impossible. So, if they got the Defcon 2 or “DEFense readiness CONdition 2” alert, which means “Next step to nuclear war. Armed Forces ready to deploy and engage in fewer than 6 hours,” they should put on the patch and save one eye.

#3

The military had programs in the 50s and 60s whereby they would tattoo children with their blood group. It seems the programs were only in Indiana and Utah. These kids then became walking blood banks, which is handy if everyone around you is dying. “I still have my atomic tattoo (O-), but, as I grew it got distorted, so it’s pretty illegible today,” said one person, now an adult.

#2

Back to animals and a bright idea from the Brits. MI5 didn’t need exceptionally expensive cats, what they used were the entirely expendable rodents called gerbils. “MI5 sleuths planned to use gerbils to trap secret agents, terrorists, and subversives during the cold war,” writes the Guardian. The plan was simple. Gerbils can smell sweat easily. Bad people at airports sweat and release an adrenalin scent. So, gerbils were left at airport counters. Theses crafty creatures had been trained to push a lever if they smelled someone releasing lots of adrenalin scent. And yes, this is real.

#1

We are going to end on something funny. The story goes that a man called Frank Wisner who was managing psychological warfare for the US planned to drop thousands of condoms over the Soviet army from the air. The condoms would be labeled ‘medium’, and this was supposed to demoralize Soviet troops as they contemplated their well-endowed American foes. Wisner was said to have had a great sense of humor, but that didn’t stop him from killing himself in 1965.