Cold and Vietnam wars
Cold War 1947-1991 Vietnam War 1964-1973
Cold War facts
1. Russia secretly had maps so detailed of the Canadian Arctic during the Cold-War that other ships even now use them over official maps.
2. In the 1930’s starlet Hedy Lamarr invented a new technology to stop Nazi’s from jamming Navy torpedoes, but the idea was rejected until 1962 and implemented during the Cold War. Her frequency hopping technology is also the basis for modern Bluetooth.
3. During the Cold War, the USSR was able to tell a Soviet passport was a forged and fake because the staples in real passports would corrode due to the poor quality of metal.
4. The USSR and the USA were originally in talks to jointly go into space together during the Cold War. The USSR almost accepted but then President Kennedy was assassinated and the Soviets didn’t trust Vice President Johnson, so the plan fell through.
5. During the Cold War, the CIA launched Operation Kitty in which cats were surgically implanted with bugging devices to eavesdrop on Soviet conversations, after all who would suspect a cat of wearing a wire. The 1st mission failed after the cat was run over and the $15million operation was dropped.
6. During the Cold War, USSR thought that the heavily trafficked building in the center courtyard of the Pentagon was a top-secret meeting room and pointed nukes at it. It was a hot dog stand.
7. Congress added the “Under God” phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance during the Cold War. This symbolized the resistance to communists, who were atheists.
8. During the Cold War, maps distributed in the US utilized distorted map projections to make the USSR and Vietnam seem larger, closer and more “menacing.”
9. The US Air Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might at the height of the Cold War. The mathematical modeling for the explosion was done by Carl Sagan.
10. The CIA secretly spiked the bread from a bakery in the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit with enormous quantities of LSD as part of its cold war mind-control experiments.
11. During the Cold War, America used bears to test their ejector seats in supersonic jets.
12. The Canadian government forcibly relocated Inuit to the most northern parts of the country during the Cold War in order to assert its sovereignty in the arctic.
13. The term “Cold War” was first invented by George Orwell, author of the book satirizing Stalinism, “Animal Farm”.
14. The term “Third World Country” does not mean poor, it refers to a country which was not aligned with either America/First World or Soviet/Second World during the Cold War.
15. During the cold war America sent Romania 20,000 bibles, which the Romanians turned into toilet paper because they had a shortage.Vietnam War facts
More than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans, were killed in the conflict.
9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975.
2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam.
Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation.
240 men were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War.
The first man to die in Vietnam was James Davis, in 1961. He was with the 509th Radio Research Station. Davis Station in Saigon was named for him.
58,148 were killed in Vietnam.
75,000 were severely disabled. 23,214 were 100% disabled.
91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served.
74% say they would serve again, even knowing the outcome.
Vietnam veterans have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups.
Vietnam veterans’ personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent.
Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21.
11,465 of those killed were younger than 20 years old. Of those killed, 17,539 were married.
- 87% of Americans hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem.