Soviet Russia needed lighthouses on their uninhabited Northern Coast, so they built automated lighthouses powered by small nuclear reactors.
100 Mind-Blowing Soviet Facts
Both U.S. and Soviet militaries have trained dolphins. They can be used for rescuing lost naval swimmers and locating underwater mines.
In 1986, a soviet Aeroflot pilot tried to land the plane blindly with all the windows curtained due to a bet with the co-pilot. He crashed and killed 70 of the 94 passengers on board.
The CIA spent 25 million dollars on “spy cats.” In the 1960s, the CIA tried using cats to gather intel on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. They equipped cats with a batter, microphone and antenna to record data. You can guess how that turned out.
Dolphins are highly trainable creatures. During the Vietnam War, both America and the Soviet Union trained dolphins. These animals could detect mines, deliver needed equipment to divers, retrieve lost items, and protect submarines. Dolphins are very intelligent and emotional. The dolphin who portrayed Flipper chose not to return to the surface for air and died with her trainer, essentially committing suicide.
Under Joseph Stalin’s regime, “Hamlet” was banned. The official reason: Hamlet’s indecisiveness and depression were incompatible with the new Soviet spirit of optimism, fortitude, and clarity.
There’s a soviet version of The Lord of the Rings, and it’s downright woeful. Titled Khraniteli (The Keepers) followed the plot of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in JRR Tolkien’s legendary trilogy. It was released straight to TV in 1991, and much like the Soviet Union as a whole, it ended up being a complete and utter catastrophe. While the characters and plot may be recognizable to those who dare to watch Khraniteli, the special effects (if you can call them that!) are so lacking that it ruins the point of producing it in the first place.
Government vehicles in Cuba are legally required to pick up hitchhikers. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba went through a period of severe economic hardship called the “Special Period,” and the majority of the country’s vehicles came to a standstill. Unable to take public transport because there wasn’t enough oil or parts to maintain the buses, citizens resorted to hitchhiking. Times got so difficult that the government forced all of their vehicles with free space to pick up any hitchhikers, typically found at designated pick-up points.
At their closest points, the U.S. and the Soviet Union are over 2 miles (3km) apart.
The Nintendo Game Boy went to space. In 1993, a Soviet cosmonaut brought his Nintendo Game Boy to space on the TM-17 space mission. It is said to have orbited Earth 3,000 times and was later auctioned for $1,220.
Soviet perspective. In 50 days on the Eastern Front of World War Two in July and August 1943 the losses suffered by the Germans and the Soviets were greater than those sustained by the USA and Great Britain combined, for the whole of the Second World War.
Cold War reaches boiling point. While the world watched the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, they didn’t know just how close they came to destruction. The US Navy dropped harmless depth charges on a submerged Russian submarine off the coast of Cuba to try and force it to surface. The crew, believing that World War Three had begun, argued whether they should launch the nuclear torpedo that they had on board, and came close to a unanimous vote to launch. Luckily, Senior Officer Vasili Arkhipov cast the one vote needed to stop the impending destruction.
Soviet Union Spies: The NSA helped the U.S. stay ahead of Soviet Union spies by intercepting and analysing their communications, providing critical intelligence to policymakers and military forces.