98 Fun Facts About Cold War

Who was Russia's president when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991?

Boris Yeltsin, elected Russia's president in June 1991, defied an August coup attempt from atop a tank; the Cold War is often dated from the 1947 Truman Doctrine to the Soviet Union's dissolution that December.

Which British writer used the phrase 'cold war' in a 1945 essay about the atomic bomb?

George Orwell wrote in Tribune in October 1945 that the bomb could leave great powers in a permanent 'cold war', a 'peace that is no peace'; presidential adviser Bernard Baruch took the phrase into US politics in a 1947 speech.

In which journal did the pseudonymous 'X Article' introducing 'containment' to US policy appear in July 1947?

Foreign Affairs ran the essay in July 1947 under the byline 'X' because its author was a serving State Department official; its call for 'long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment' named an era of policy.

At which university did George C. Marshall deliver the June 1947 address proposing US aid for European recovery?

Harvard was giving Marshall an honorary degree on 5 June 1947; his short address offered no figures and said the initiative 'must come from Europe', and within a year Congress had voted the money.

What nickname did Berliners give the airlift planes that dropped candy on tiny parachutes?

Raisin bombers, 'Rosinenbomber' in German: pilot Gail Halvorsen began the candy drops without permission, and the airlift's commander then expanded them into 'Operation Little Vittles'.

What military alliance did the US, Canada and several Western European nations form in 1949?

NATO's founding treaty of April 1949 treats an armed attack on one member as an attack on all; that clause has been invoked only once, after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States.

What was the Soviet-led defence alliance formed in May 1955 in answer to West German rearmament called?

The Warsaw Pact was signed in the Polish capital on 14 May 1955; its armies never fought the West, but in 1968 they invaded one of the pact's own members, Czechoslovakia.

Which country hosted the US Jupiter missiles that Washington secretly promised Moscow it would remove?

Turkey: the promise, relayed in secret by the president's brother to the Soviet ambassador, helped end a nuclear standoff, and the Jupiters there and in Italy were later withdrawn.

In which city did the US and Soviet leaders hold an October 1986 summit that nearly abolished nuclear weapons?

The Reykjavík summit of 11-12 October 1986, held at Höfði House, ended without agreement, but the ground covered there fed directly into the INF Treaty signed in December 1987.

The Soviet blockade of West Berlin began in June 1948, days after the Western Allies introduced which new currency?

The Deutsche Mark replaced the inflation-wrecked Reichsmark in the western zones in June 1948; the Soviets answered by cutting the rail, road and canal routes into West Berlin, and the Allies supplied the city by air for almost a year.

In 1968 Soviet-led forces invaded Czechoslovakia to crush which reform movement?

The Prague Spring was Alexander Dubček's 'socialism with a human face'; when the tanks rolled in on 20-21 August 1968 he was arrested, flown to Moscow and pressed into signing a protocol that began undoing his reforms.

The 1947 Truman Doctrine began with a request to help which country's government fight communist guerrillas?

Greece: Britain had warned Washington it could no longer afford to prop up the Greek government, so Truman asked Congress to step in, and a $400 million aid package was approved two months later.

What did East German forces use to seal the Berlin border in August 1961, before concrete replaced it?

Barbed wire went up in the early hours of Sunday 13 August 1961 while Berliners slept, and streets along the line were torn up; the first concrete blocks followed within days.

After the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, Congress gave the US president a free hand to wage which war?

The Vietnam War escalated after Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution with only two votes against in August 1964; serious doubts later emerged over whether the second reported attack on US destroyers had happened at all.

What 13-day confrontation in October 1962 is considered the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war?

Cuban Missile Crisis: the standoff ended on 28 October 1962, when Moscow agreed to take its missiles home in return for a US pledge not to invade the island.

Who was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964?

Nikita Khrushchev won the power struggle that followed Stalin's death, shocked the party in 1956 with a 'Secret Speech' denouncing Stalin, and was himself forced into retirement by his colleagues in October 1964.

Which 1975 agreement, signed by 35 states, recognized Europe's post-war borders as inviolable?

The Helsinki Accords gave Moscow the recognition of post-war borders it wanted, but their human-rights pledges cut the other way: activists across the Soviet bloc set up 'Helsinki groups' to hold their governments to the text.

Who sang 'Looking for Freedom' above the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve 1989?

David Hasselhoff sang from a crane, seven weeks after an East German spokesman's fumbled announcement of new travel rules sent crowds to the crossings; his song had spent eight weeks at number one in West Germany earlier that year.

Along which line of latitude was Korea divided into Soviet and American zones in 1945?

Two US officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, picked the 38th Parallel at short notice in August 1945; it split the peninsula roughly in the middle, and the 1953 armistice line runs close to it.

What nickname did Berlin's Glienicke Bridge earn from its prisoner exchanges?

Bridge of Spies: Soviet agent Rudolf Abel was traded there for a captured American on 10 February 1962, two more swaps followed in the 1980s, and reporters gave the crossing between Potsdam and West Berlin its name.

Who warned in a 1946 speech in Missouri that an 'iron curtain' had descended across Europe?

Winston Churchill, out of office and invited by a small Missouri college with Truman's backing, said on 5 March 1946: 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.'

What did the Cold War nuclear doctrine abbreviated MAD stand for?

Mutually Assured Destruction held that neither side would strike first if both were certain to be destroyed in return; the 1972 ABM Treaty even limited missile defences so that each stayed open to retaliation.

What was the first US satellite, launched in early 1958 after the Soviets had already orbited two?

Explorer 1 went up on 31 January 1958 atop a Juno I rocket and carried James Van Allen's Geiger counter, which detected the radiation belts later named for him.

Why did East Germany build the Berlin Wall in 1961?

To stop its citizens fleeing west: the main inner-German border had been closed since 1952, leaving Berlin as the last loophole, and the exodus through it was draining the state of its young and skilled.

What term describes the easing of US-Soviet tension in the 1970s?

Détente, French for a 'loosening', brought a run of summits and arms treaties, but it unravelled in the late 1970s and ended when Soviet troops invaded a neighbour in December 1979.

The 1972 SALT I agreement left warheads uncapped but froze the number of what at existing levels?

Missile launchers were frozen, but each side could keep fitting several warheads to every missile, so warhead totals went on climbing after 1972; a companion treaty capped anti-missile defences.

Which film title became the nickname of the Strategic Defense Initiative, a 1983 US plan for a space-based missile shield?

Star Wars: critics borrowed the film's name, one senator deriding 'reckless Star Wars schemes', because the plan imagined shooting down missiles from space; no such shield was ever deployed.

Who was the last leader of the Soviet Union before its dissolution in 1991?

Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in March 1985 and resigned on 25 December 1991; that evening the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time.

Which Russian word for 'openness' named the late-1980s Soviet policy of easing censorship?

Glasnost let long-banned books into print, among them Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, first published in the Soviet Union in 1988; its twin slogan, perestroika, meant 'restructuring'.

A 1971 visit to China by American players of which sport helped reopen US-China relations?

Table tennis: American player Glenn Cowan boarded the Chinese team's bus by mistake at the world championships in Japan, Beijing soon invited the US team to visit, and within a year a US president had followed them.

At which Cuban inlet did US-trained exiles land in April 1961 in a failed bid to topple Castro?

Bay of Pigs: Brigade 2506, trained in Guatemala, landed on 17 April 1961 and was beaten within days by forces Castro commanded in person; the captured exiles were later traded for food and medicine.

Which satellite did the Soviet Union launch in October 1957, during the International Geophysical Year, to open the Space Race?

Sputnik 1 went up on 4 October 1957 during the International Geophysical Year, a science programme for which both superpowers had promised a satellite; Moscow got there first, to the surprise of many.

Which US President delivered the famous 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech in West Berlin in 1963?

John F. Kennedy spoke outside West Berlin's city hall on 26 June 1963 and, after his first use of the German line, joked: 'I appreciate my interpreter translating my German.'

What name, taken from its best-known advocate, is given to the Second Red Scare?

McCarthyism takes its name from Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin; Truman told reporters in March 1950 that McCarthy was 'the greatest asset the Kremlin has', and the label outlived the senator's 1954 censure.

In which city did Tito host the first Non-Aligned Movement summit in 1961?

Belgrade suited a movement of the unaligned: Tito had broken with Stalin in 1948 without joining the West, and in September 1961 he launched it there with Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah and Sukarno.

What was the 'U-2 Incident' in 1960?

A US spy plane shot down over Soviet territory on 1 May 1960: Washington first claimed a lost weather aircraft, until Moscow produced the captured pilot alive, and a planned Paris summit collapsed.

Which city's 1984 Summer Olympics did the Soviet Union and most of its allies boycott?

Los Angeles: Moscow stayed away four years after the United States led a boycott of its own Games, though Romania defied the bloc, sent a team and finished second in the gold-medal table.

Which country's premier, Imre Nagy, promised free elections in 1956 days before Soviet tanks crushed its uprising?

Hungary's premier Imre Nagy took his country out of Moscow's military bloc on 1 November 1956; Soviet forces crushed the uprising in Budapest three days later, and Nagy was hanged in June 1958 after a secret trial.

Which Cold War idea did Eisenhower set out when asked about Indochina at an April 1954 press conference?

Domino Theory: Eisenhower likened Southeast Asian states to 'a row of dominoes', where knocking over the first would quickly topple the last; the idea was later used to justify sending US troops to the region.

Who became the first human in space, completing one orbit of Earth for the Soviet Union on 12 April 1961?

Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight was his only trip to space: he toured the world as a celebrity, and Soviet officials, afraid of losing their hero, later barred him from flying another mission.

Despite its 'red telephone' image, the Moscow-Washington hotline set up in 1963 first carried messages by what means?

Teletype machines carried the hotline's messages: both sides rejected a telephone because leaders would have had to rely on instant translation, while a typed text gave each time to read carefully before replying.

Which country experienced a Soviet invasion in 1979, becoming a major proxy conflict of the Cold War?

Afghanistan: Soviet special forces stormed the presidential palace on 27 December 1979 and killed Hafizullah Amin, a communist leader Moscow no longer trusted; the war that followed lasted almost a decade.

Which animal, a cartoon character named Bert, taught 1950s American schoolchildren to 'duck and cover' from an atomic blast?

A turtle: Bert ducks into his shell at the first sign of danger in the early-1950s civil-defense film 'Duck and Cover', which was shown to American schoolchildren alongside classroom drills.

At which Berlin Wall crossing did American and Soviet tanks face each other in October 1961?

Checkpoint Charlie was the crossing for Allied personnel and foreigners, so a dispute over checks on an American diplomat's papers escalated there until ten tanks from each side faced off overnight.

Who wrote the 1946 'Long Telegram' from Moscow that shaped the US policy of containment?

George F. Kennan's 1946 cable argued the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist; a year later he restated the case in print under the pseudonym 'X'.

Which US intelligence agency was created in 1947 and ran Cold War covert operations?

The CIA grew out of a wartime intelligence service, the OSS, which Truman abolished within weeks of Japan's surrender; he soon reversed course, and in 1947 signed the National Security Act creating a permanent agency.

Which leader demanded 'tear down this wall!' in a June 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate?

Ronald Reagan delivered the line on 12 June 1987 with the Wall directly behind the podium; State Department and NSC drafts had tried to cut it as too provocative.

Which American politician sparred with the Soviet premier in the 1959 'Kitchen Debate' at a Moscow exhibition?

Richard Nixon, then vice president, had come to open an American exhibition in July 1959 when the argument broke out; the Soviet leader boasted his country would soon overtake America and wave as it passed.

Which Moscow stray dog became the first animal to orbit Earth, aboard Sputnik 2 in 1957?

Laika died of overheating by her fourth orbit, a truth kept quiet until 2002. Soviet scientists picked Moscow strays because they were already hardened to cold and hunger.

Which garment did designer Louis Réard name in 1946 after a Pacific atoll used for US atomic tests?

The bikini debuted at a Paris swimming pool on 5 July 1946, four days after the first Operation Crossroads blast at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

Which symbol, designed by Gerald Holtom in 1958, became the logo of Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament?

The peace sign overlays the flag semaphore signals for N and D, short for nuclear disarmament. American anti-war and counterculture activists later made it their own.

Which assault rifle, a staple of Cold War guerrilla armies, appears on the flag of Mozambique?

The AK-47, designed in the Soviet Union, sits crossed with a hoe over an open book on Mozambique's flag. The opposition party RENAMO has called for the rifle to be removed.

Which woman did a Soviet army newspaper dub the 'Iron Lady' after her 1976 speech attacking Moscow?

Margaret Thatcher embraced the jibe from the army paper Red Star a week later, telling her constituents it put her in the company of Wellington, the 'Iron Duke'.

Which sport's US national team toured communist China in April 1971, opening a diplomatic thaw?

Table tennis reopened a door shut for two decades. The invitation followed an American player's chance ride on the Chinese team's bus at the world championships in Japan.

Which singer lent his name to the Soviet policy of letting Eastern Bloc allies choose their own path?

Frank Sinatra was invoked by Soviet spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, who quipped that Moscow now had 'the Frank Sinatra doctrine' and its allies could go their own way.

Beside which Moscow landmark did West German teenager Mathias Rust land a rented Cessna in May 1987?

Red Square was his target, but crowds forced him onto a nearby bridge. Its trolleybus wires, which would have blocked the landing, had been taken down for maintenance that morning.

What nickname is given to the US hockey team's upset of the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics?

Miracle on Ice echoes broadcaster Al Michaels's cry of 'Do you believe in miracles?' in the final seconds. The mostly amateur Americans beat a team with four straight Olympic golds.

Which physicist, wartime director of Los Alamos, lost his security clearance after a 1954 hearing?

Robert Oppenheimer was cleared 68 years too late: the US energy secretary voided the ruling in 2022, calling the hearing a flawed process.

Which Apollo 11 commander became the first person to walk on the Moon in July 1969?

Neil Armstrong stepped out about six hours after landing. Early checklists had the lunar module pilot leaving first, and reporters in 1969 wrote that Aldrin would get the honour.

Which revolutionary took power in Cuba in 1959 after dictator Fulgencio Batista fled into exile?

Fidel Castro's rebels won when Batista fled on New Year's Eve with a fortune of over $300 million. Castro then led Cuba until 2008.

Which communist leader proclaimed the People's Republic of China from Beijing's Tiananmen Gate in October 1949?

Mao Zedong spoke at exactly 3 p.m. on 1 October, a date that became the new country's National Day.

Which Soviet dictator, born Ioseb Jughashvili in Georgia, ruled the USSR until his death in March 1953?

Joseph Stalin took his alias, used from 1912, from the Russian word for steel. It is often translated as 'Man of Steel'.

Which nuclear power plant near Pripyat in Soviet Ukraine exploded in April 1986, spreading fallout across Europe?

Chernobyl went unacknowledged by Moscow for two days, until radiation set off alarms at a nuclear plant in Sweden more than 1,000 km away.

Which Soviet security agency, created in 1954, was headquartered in Moscow's Lubyanka building?

The KGB worked out of the Lubyanka, built in 1898 as offices for the All-Russia Insurance Company. Its prison was turned into a staff cafeteria in the 1980s.

Which US agency was created in 1958, months after Sputnik, to run a civilian space programme?

NASA absorbed the aeronautics research agency NACA, inheriting its 8,000 employees and three major laboratories.

Which American city hosted the 1984 Summer Olympics, boycotted by the Soviet Union and most of its allies?

Los Angeles still drew a then-record 140 nations, while the boycotting states staged their own Friendship Games across the Eastern Bloc.

To which island did Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government retreat in 1949 after losing China's civil war?

Taiwan became the Nationalists' refuge, and the retreating regime took China's gold, silver and dollar reserves with it across the strait.

Which Polish-born pope drew ecstatic crowds on a 1979 visit to Poland that shook its communist rulers?

John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. Crowds at his open-air Masses answered him with chants of 'We want God!'

Which Russian leader climbed onto a tank outside Moscow's parliament to defy the hardline coup of August 1991?

Boris Yeltsin addressed the crowd from the tank's hull, the coup collapsed within days, and the plotters all lost their posts.

Which independent trade union emerged from strikes at Poland's Gdańsk Shipyard in August 1980?

Solidarity grew to 10 million members within about a year, one-third of Poland's working-age population.

What name is given to the peaceful protests that ended communist rule in Czechoslovakia and made Václav Havel president?

Velvet Revolution suits a handover of power completed in under two weeks without violence. Slovaks know the same events as the Gentle Revolution.

Which 1964 Stanley Kubrick satire has Peter Sellers playing three roles as a rogue general triggers nuclear war?

Dr. Strangelove was loosely based on a deadly serious thriller, the 1958 novel Red Alert. Sellers improvised much of his dialogue, and Kubrick wrote the ad-libs into the script.

Which American beat Soviet champion Boris Spassky in 1972's 'Match of the Century' for the world chess title?

Bobby Fischer's victory ended 24 years of unbroken Soviet domination of the world championship.

Which symbolic timepiece did the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists first set at seven minutes to midnight in 1947?

The Doomsday Clock began as cover art: artist Martyl Langsdorf, married to a Manhattan Project scientist, drew it for the magazine's June 1947 issue.

Which US president used his televised farewell address to warn Americans about the 'military-industrial complex'?

Dwight Eisenhower spoke with unusual authority: he was a five-star general warning against the arms industry's 'unwarranted influence' in the councils of government.

What was the common name of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, which ran a vast network of civilian informants?

The Stasi had 173,081 unofficial informants on its books inside East Germany in its final year, alongside some 91,000 full-time staff.

Which East German car with a two-stroke engine and plastic body panels had a waiting list of up to thirteen years?

The Trabant's body was duroplast, a hard plastic made from recycled cotton waste and resins. Its 1950s design stayed largely unchanged for three decades.

Which debut novel by Tom Clancy follows a Soviet submarine captain trying to defect to the United States?

The Hunt for Red October was first published by the US Naval Institute Press and introduced Clancy's best-known hero, the analyst Jack Ryan.

Which Soviet hydrogen weapon, tested over Novaya Zemlya in 1961, was the most powerful ever detonated?

Tsar Bomba yielded about 50 megatons. Its shock wave caught the retreating bomber 115 km away and knocked the plane 800 metres down through the air.

Which married couple were executed at Sing Sing in June 1953 for passing atomic secrets to Moscow?

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. The judge moved the hour forward so they would not die on the Jewish Sabbath.

Which Argentine-born doctor became a commander in the Cuban Revolution and was executed in Bolivia in 1967?

Che Guevara got his nickname from the Argentine filler word 'che', which he used constantly. Alberto Korda's portrait of him has been called the most famous photograph in the world.

Which US Defense Department computer network, first linked in 1969, became a forerunner of the internet?

ARPANET's first message, sent on 29 October 1969, was meant to be the command 'login', but the receiving computer crashed after two characters.

Who became the first woman in space, orbiting Earth 48 times alone aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963?

Valentina Tereshkova was a textile factory worker and amateur skydiver before her selection, and had kept her parachute jumps secret from her family.

Which Mercury astronaut became the first American to orbit Earth, aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962?

John Glenn returned to orbit in 1998 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, aged 77, while serving as a US senator.

Which city on the Rhine served as West Germany's capital from 1949 until reunification?

Bonn beat Frankfurt to become the provisional capital in November 1949, and stayed the seat of government until 1999, nine years after reunification.

On which holiday in 1991 was the Soviet flag lowered over the Kremlin for the last time?

Christmas Day 1991 ended with the red flag replaced by Russia's tricolour, shortly after the last Soviet president resigned in a televised speech.

Which US general was relieved of command in April 1951 after publicly contradicting the president over the Korean War?

Douglas MacArthur came home to the largest ticker-tape parade New York had yet seen, and told Congress that old soldiers never die.

Which Iranian prime minister was overthrown in a 1953 coup backed by Britain and the US after nationalising oil?

Mohammad Mosaddegh was jailed for three years, then held under house arrest until his death. He was buried in his own home to forestall a political furore.

Which Marxist president of Chile died in the presidential palace during Augusto Pinochet's coup of September 1973?

Salvador Allende used his last speech, with troops surrounding the palace, to vow that he would not resign. Pinochet then refused to hand power back to civilians.

Which Nicaraguan rebel force was secretly funded with the proceeds of US arms sales to Iran in the mid-1980s?

The Contras took their name from the Spanish for counter-revolutionaries. Congress had cut off US military aid to them, which is what made the secret funding a scandal.

Which Soviet duty officer judged a September 1983 satellite warning of incoming American missiles to be a false alarm?

Stanislav Petrov reasoned that a real American strike would be all-out, so a mere five missiles made no sense. The 'launches' were sunlight glinting off high-altitude clouds.

Which airline's Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter in September 1983 after straying off course from Alaska?

Korean Air Lines' loss changed everyday life: in response, the US president ordered that GPS satellite navigation be made freely available for civilian use.

Which British intelligence officer, a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, defected to Moscow from Beirut in 1963?

Kim Philby had earlier served as Britain's chief liaison with American intelligence in Washington, giving him access to the secrets of two countries at once.

Which Soviet 'Chief Designer' behind Sputnik had his identity kept secret until his death in 1966?

Sergei Korolev had survived the Gulag: arrested on false charges in 1938, he spent months in a Kolyma gold mine before being returned to rocket work.

Which blacklisted Hollywood Ten screenwriter secretly won two Oscars, for Roman Holiday and The Brave One?

Dalton Trumbo's Oscars went to a front writer and to a pseudonym. Open screen credit for Exodus and Spartacus in 1960 signalled that the blacklist was breaking.

Which first prime minister of independent Congo was ousted within months and executed in Katanga in January 1961?

Patrice Lumumba was toppled in a coup led by Joseph Mobutu, the junior minister he had himself promoted to army chief of staff.

In which Indonesian city did twenty-nine Asian and African states hold their landmark conference in April 1955?

Bandung brought together countries holding 54% of the world's population, most of them newly independent. Organisers Sukarno and Nehru wanted a bloc tied to neither superpower.

Which Romanian communist dictator fled Bucharest by helicopter with his wife Elena, only to be captured and shot?

Nicolae Ceaușescu had ordered troops to fire on protesters in Timișoara days earlier. The army then turned on him, and a hasty show trial ended 42 years of communist rule.