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You might not know as much as you think you do when it comes to the USSR. In today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you are challenged to name all the leaders of our old Cold War rival. There were 8 leaders of the former Soviet Union, and the 3 leaders of the new Russian Federation -so far. Can you name them all in ten minutes? I got ten of them, but could not remember the current president! Oh, and spelling counts, which is what ate up my time, but you only need the surname. Link
A monument featuring a relief of soldiers stands in Sofia, Bulgaria to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Soviet takeover of Bulgaria. This weekend, street artists altered the scene with paint. Now the figures resemble Superman, Ronald McDonald, Santa Claus, the Joker, and other pop culture icons! See more pictures at io9. Link
Twenty years after the Cold War ended, more and more classified documents from that era are being released, which means we are gradually learning about what really went on at the infamous Area 51. It was a serious game of concealing experimental aircraft (code named OXCART) from Soviet spy satellites. The military knew when the satellites were scheduled to pass over, and would hurry and hide the planes in sheds before they could be photographed.
It turned out that even laborious hooting and scooting weren’t enough. Spies had learned that the Soviets had a drawing of an OXCART plane—obtained, it was assumed, via an infrared satellite.
As a plane sat in the hot desert, its shadow would create a relatively cool silhouette, visible in infrared even after the plane had been moved inside.
“It’s like a parking lot,” Barnes told National Geographic News. “After all the cars have left you can still see how many were parked there [in infrared] because of the difference in ground temperatures.”
To thwart the infrared satellites, Area 51 crews began constructing fanciful fake planes out of cardboard and other mundane materials, to cast misleading shadows for the Soviets to ponder.
Find out more about the cat-and-mouse game at Area 51 in this article from NatGeo News. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!
(Image credit: Roadrunners Internationale via Pangloss Films)
The Soviet Union used their space program as one of the front line battles of the Cold War. And for a time they were ahead, as anyone who remembers Sputnik and Gagarin will tell you. They had an edge in that reaching their goals was more important to the nation than the lives of the cosmonauts. Documentation on the cosmonauts is limited, and some evidence has been altered, such as the disappearing cosmonaut in the photo here. Then there was Voskhod 2, the mission featuring the first space walk.
The launch went up safely, got into an orbit, and a cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov, became the first human to perform a spacewalk. Super. But that was about when things took a turn for the cataclysmic.
On his way back in, Leonov’s spacesuit inflated due to the vacuum of space, which, apparently, the guys who designed the suit had never heard of. His suit was so laughably ballooney, in fact, that he could barely move and most definitely couldn’t fit back in the spaceship door. Leonov was forced to let some air out, all the while suffering from heatstroke and the bends. By the time his little 12 minute walk turned into a 20 minute walk, he was up to his knees in sweat. But he made it back in to the ship, safe and sound.
However, things got worse for Voskhod 2 after that. Read all about it at Cracked. NSFW text. Link -via reddit
In 1970, during the Luna 17 mission, the Soviet space program landed the first ever remote-controlled vehicle on the moon. Lunokhod 1 spent eleven months taking pictures of the moon’s surface, and sent back about 20,000 images. It stopped communicating with the earth in 1971. Fast-forward 40 years, and read about how a new use has been found for Lunokhod 1 at the blog Starts With A Bang! Link
Fifty-two years ago today (November 3, 1957), Sputnik 2 launched from the Soviet Union with a dog named Laika {wiki} on board. It was a tremendous political coup for the USSR to launch a living being into orbit. Unfortunately it wasn’t so tremendous for Laika, as they made no plans for her to ever return to earth. Several stories were told of how long Laika survived in space, but the full story was finally revealed in 2002. Laika only lived a few hours before the stress and heat did her in. Her remains orbited the earth for five months until the capsule burned up on re-entry in April of 1958. In honor of the anniversary, here’s Space Doggity by Jonathon Coulton. -via Metafilter
Update: The video footage is from the song Moan by Trentemøller. -Thanks, waldemar!
From the Upcoming 
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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.
