“Attack on all fronts” Canada, 1943
Pamphlet welcoming soldiers to the 90th Replacement Battalion at Long Binh in Saigon. Soldiers processed through the battalion coming into Vietnam and leaving Vietnam.
A list of projected ICBM locations and their respective pros and cons, created during the Cold War by the US Center for Defense Information.
After the death of Stalin, and especially after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, for many citizens of the USSR who sincerely believed in Bolshevism, the leader of the ‘International Communist Movement’ naturally became Mao Zedong. Comrade Mao, an old honoured partisan, leading under his red banner the most populated country in the world, seemed to received wisdom to play far more effectively the role of world leader than a professional party apparatchik with a rather unclear biography like Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev.
And the Soviet leader certainly felt ill at ease with this fact. Like, for example, in March 1962, when a 40 year old worker named Kulakov, a member of the Soviet Communist Party, working in the construction of Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station in the Irkutsk region, sent a letter to Khrushchev. In the letter, the proletarian didn’t mix his words to the First Secretary of the Central Committee: “The main mass of Soviet peoples believe you to be an enemy of the Party of Lenin and Stalin. In a word you have remained a living Trotskyist… V.I. Lenin dreamed of making China a friend of the Soviet people and this dream was realized by Comrade Stalin but you have destroyed this friendship. Mao is against your defilement of the Leninist Party and Stalin. Lenin and Stalin audaciously fought against the enemies of the revolution and were victorious in open battle not fearing imprisonment. You are a coward and an agent provocateur. While Comrade Stalin was alive you kissed his arse, and now you pour dirt on him…”
For this letter the worker Kulakov was sentence to a prison term of one year, accused of ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’. And similar declarations, some of them public, were not lacking. In Kiev on March 18 of the same year (1962) during the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, a 45 year old Kolkhoz chairman by the name of Boris Loskutov and a member of the Soviet Communist Party, distributed leaflets with the text: “Long live the Leninist Party without the windbag and traitor Khrushchev. The politics of this madman has led to the loss of China, Albania and millions of our former friends. The country has reached a dead end. Let’s close ranks. Let’s save the country.”
— Alexei Volynets, The Soviet Red Guard: The Soviet Union Needs Mao Zedong! (2013), tr. Afoniya, Towards the History of Maoist Dissidence in the Soviet Union (2013)
Mercury-Redstone 1 was the first mission of the United States’ Project Mercury. Scheduled to launch on November 21st, 1960, the booster ignited at 9 am, but was automatically shut down seconds after due to the electrical umbilical cables separating from the rocket in the wrong order. Mercury-Redstone 1 would achieve an altitude of 4 inches from the launch pad before settling back down, still upright and unexploded.
After the engines shut down, the escape rocket attached to the capsule ignited and separated from the capsule completely, landing some 400 yards away. The main and reserve parachutes inside the top of the capsule then deployed. This lead to a fear of a gust of wind toppling the rocket.
With a fully pressurized booster sitting unsupported on the launch pad, Flight Director Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz and the launch team discussed several methods to depressurize the rocket. With a forecast of calm weather for the rest of the day and evening, it was eventually decided, after throwing out the idea of using a rifle to shoot holes in the rocket, to let the batteries deplete themselves and the rocket’s oxidizers boil off. This was successful, and lead to Kraft’s first rule of Flight Control - “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything!”
The Mercury-Redstone suffered only minor damage, and was returned to Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for refurbishment. The Mercury Capsule was reused for a follow up mission, Mercury-Redstone 1A. MR-1A launched December 19th, 1960 and successfully qualified the Mercury capsule for flight.
58 years ago this day, someone has the bright idea to shoot a fully loaded missile as it sits on the launch pad.
(Thankfully they threw that idea out the window)
Standard Radium Solution for Drinking (c. 1915-1920) - This bottle (empty) of radium water was produced by the Standard Chemical Company of Pittsburgh. The recommended dose was 1 bottle after every meal. Each bottle contained a maximum-equilibrium constant of radium emanation [radon], 5400 mache units. One mache unit represented 364 pCi of radon per liter. Today, the maximum containment level for radium in public water supplies is 5 pCi/L.
Internally deposited radium emits alpha particles that may then damage surrounding tissue. High levels of radium may cause depression of the immune system, anemia, cataracts, and fractured teeth. Exposure to high levels of radium also has shown an increased incidence of bone, liver and breast cancer.
Working on the assumption that it was U.S. military and economic superiority that won the Cold War, the United States has pursued security policies — such as expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe — that Moscow opposes, in the expectation that Russia will remain too weak to do anything about it. More attention to the nonmaterial, normative, and domestic political influences on the end of the Cold War might have made U.S. policymakers more sensitive to the risks of that approach. Creating a new division of Europe with Russia outside the “club” reinforces those elements of Russian society that promote a Russian identity distinct from the transnational cultural, economic, and political society that Gorbachev worked so hard to join. Policymakers should heed the lessons of transnational relations during the Cold War and not squander the opportunity to cultivate a peaceful and democratic Russia as a full member of the international community.
Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (1999), 391.
The last paragraph in a book that was published ~20 years ago.