The Osoaviakhim-1 Disaster
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 13, 2024
Between 1930 and 1932, Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard made more than two dozen trips to the upper atmosphere using a balloon of his design...
Showing posts with the label Soviet Union
Nedelin Catastrophe: The Worst Space-Related Disaster
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 19, 2023
The Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan is one of the busiest and the most important spaceport on earth with over a thousand satellit...
Why Soviet Cosmonauts Carried a Gun to Space
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 27, 2022
For decades, the standard survival kit carried by Russian cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz spacecraft included a specially built gun and a few do...
Luna 9: The First Soft Landing on Another Planetary Body
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 2, 2022
The first spacecraft to achieve a survivable soft-landing on the moon was the Soviet unmanned spacecraft Luna 9. It was an exceedingly diffi...
Why The Soviet Union Advertised Products That Didn’t Exist
Kaushik Patowary
May 4, 2022
The purpose of commercials is to advertise products and drive sales, but in Soviet Russia under communism they served an altogether differen...
How The Soviet Union Tried to Abolish Weekends
Anonymous
Apr 8, 2022
About a hundred years ago in August 1929, the Soviet Union moved to alter the most fundamental tool of daily functioning: the calendar. An i...
How a Finnish Polka Song Defeated The Mighty Red Army
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 2, 2022
Three months after Hitler invaded Poland triggering a series of nasty and costly wars across the world, the Soviet Union took the opportunit...
Belka and Strelka: Soviet Space Dogs
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 17, 2021
In August 1960, two dogs named Belka and Strelka completed went to space aboard a Soviet spacecraft, stayed for a full day orbiting, and ret...
Venera 7, The First Craft to Make Controlled Landing on Another Planet And Send Data From its Surface
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 9, 2021
By 1961 the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union had been going on for six years. The Soviets had the upper hand, havin...
Vladimir Komarov: The Cosmonaut Who Fell From Space
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 9, 2021
The year 1967 held special significance for Soviet Union—it was the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, as well as the 10th annivers...
The Soviet Moon Prank
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 24, 2021
In December 1968, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders, became the first men to fly around the moon and return to earth. But they ...
Viktor Belenko: The Pilot Who Stole a Secret Soviet Aircraft
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 22, 2021
Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko woke up early in the morning as he had done everyday for the past four weeks, to watch the approaching d...
The First Mars Rover
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 26, 2021
In May 1971, the Soviet Union sent to Mars two robotic space probes launched within nine days of each other—Mars 2 and Mars 3. Neither space...
Danila Tkachenko’s Ghostly Photographs of Abandoned Soviet Military Sites
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 30, 2021
In his series “Restricted Areas”, Moscow-based visual artist Danila Tkachenko looks at the human impulse to use destructive technologies in ...
The Flying Tanks of World War 2
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 16, 2021
Dropping supplies including combat vehicles to troops on the ground was one of the biggest achievements of the military during World War 2. ...
The Great Seal Bug: How The Soviets Spied The US For 7 Years Via a Children’s Gift
Kaushik Patowary
May 10, 2021
In 1946, a group of Soviet school children from the Young Pioneer organization presented to the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Wil...
Why The Soviet Union Lied About Yuri Gagarin's Historic Space Flight
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 12, 2021
Exactly sixty years ago, on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome taking along cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on the first ever...
Why The Soviet Union Exchanged Warships For Pepsi
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 20, 2021
The American soft drink giant Pepsi has a long presence in Russia dating back to the early 1970s when Russia was still a part of the Soviet ...
The Soviet Bomber That Was Reverse Engineered From Stolen American B-29s
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 9, 2020
Ask anyone, what won the war against Japan during the Second World War, and the answer would invariably be the ‘atomic bomb’, but truth be...
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dog
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 5, 2020
In 1955, at a meeting of the Moscow Surgical Society, a sensational exhibit was presented to the assembled guests. On the platform close t...
