Albrecht Dittrich as a student, just a few years before he came to the U.S. under the name Jack Barsky as a KGB spy.

How a KGB Spy Defected and Became a U.S. Citizen

Jack Barsky wanted to stay in the country, so he let the Soviets think he was dead

Cool Finds

Watch Declassified Nuclear Bomb Tests Online

Weapons physicist Greg Sprigg has spent five years declassifying, digitizing and reanalyzing film of the U.S.’s 210 open air nuclear detonations

This grapefruit-sized object is Vanguard TV-3, an exact replica of Vanguard 1 that failed to launch into orbit. It's now on display at the National Air and Space Museum.

The World’s First Solar-Powered Satellite is Still Up There After More Than 60 Years

This tiny grapefruit-sized satellite will still be up there well into the 2100s if we don’t take it down

American South

This Virginia Winery Once Housed One of WWII’s Most Important Spy Stations

Speakeasies are so 2012—this place has actual secrets

Hyman G. Rickover created the U.S. Navy's nuclear program, but remained ambivalent about it throughout his life

Happy(?) Birthday to the Father of the Nuclear Navy

Hyman G. Rickover pushed to nuclearize the Navy’s submarines, but admitted he’d rather ‘sink them all’ to protect humanity

Paul Robeson, photographed by Alfredo Valente in 1940.

Remembering Paul Robeson, Actor, Sportsman and Leader

Among other things, Robeson transformed one of history’s most famous showtunes into a protest song

An early B-52.

In 1957, The U.S. Flew a Jet Around the World to Prove it Could Drop a Nuclear Bomb Anywhere

The B-52 bomber that made the flight was part of a new bomber class that was still proving its worth

British double-agent Guy Burgess was one member of the Cambridge Five ring of spies.

The Student and the Spy: How One Man’s Life Was Changed by the Cambridge Five

An unlikely friendship with Guy Burgess, the infamous British double-agent, brought unexpected joy to Stanley Weiss

President Harry S. Truman, addressing Americans by radio in 1945.

We Can Thank Harry Truman for TV Politics

Truman was the first president to regularly appear on television

Mikhael A. Menshikov, new Soviet ambassador, outside White House, going to visit with President Eisenhower

Cool Finds

How Adlai Stevenson Stopped Russian Interference in the 1960 Election

The Soviets offered the former presidential candidate propaganda support if he ran in 1960, an offer he politely declined

Refugees stream across the River Ganges Delta at Kushtia, fleeing the violence in East Pakistan during the ongoing West Pakistani military campaign called Operation Searchlight. (AP Photo/Michel Laurent)

The Genocide the U.S. Can’t Remember, But Bangladesh Can’t Forget

Millions were killed in what was then known as East Pakistan, but Cold War geopolitics left defenseless Muslims vulnerable

Wernher von Braun, one of the architects of the Apollo program, was a Nazi scientist brought to the U.S. in secret in 1945.

Trending Today

Why the U.S. Government Brought Nazi Scientists to America After World War II

As the war came to a close, the U.S. government was itching to get ahold of the German wartime technology

Archival image of one of the U-Bahn's "Dora" trains in service.

Cool Finds

See the Cold War-Era Trains Berlin Is Bringing Back Into Service

The “Dora” is returning to the tracks of the U-Bahn

A replica of the lost Mark IV nuclear bomb at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada

Trending Today

Diver Found Possible Inactive 1950 Nuke Off the Coast of British Columbia

The purported bomb was discovered by a man searching for sea cucumbers

The spycatcher in the disguise he wore when he testified in court

The FBI’s Fake Russian Agent Reveals His Secrets

In an exclusive interview, a retired FBI agent who posed as a KGB officer finally spills the beans about his greatest sting operations

Scores of lives were lost while building the 816 Nuclear Plant, a long-abandoned nuclear project now open to the public.

Cool Finds

Tour the World’s Biggest Manmade Cave in China

The 816 Nuclear Plant stands as a reminder of a paranoid past

U.S. Ambassador to Russia, George F. Kennan, chats with a newsman after the Russian government told the U.S. State Department that Kennan must be recalled immediately. The Russians charged that the ambassador made completely false statements hostile to the Soviet Union. At the time, Russia demanded his recall (three days ago) Kennan was in Geneva, where he'd been visiting his daughter who is a student at the International School. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson called the Russian charges, outrageous.

George Kennan’s Love of Russia Inspired His Legendary “Containment” Strategy

It’s impossible to overstate the impact the American diplomat had on the United States’ Cold War policy

The Evpatoria radio telescope RT-70 and the Long Range Space Communications Center, which were used for one of the most ambitious efforts at extraterrestrial communication.

How a Couple of Guys Built the Most Ambitious Alien Outreach Project Ever

You might think it takes vast governmental resources to launch an extraterrestrial communication effort. Nope

Today Santiago de Cuba, which lies at the foot of the Sierra Maestra, is a bustling cultural capital.

Tony Perrottet's Cuba

How Cuba Remembers Its Revolutionary Past and Present

On the 60th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s secret landing on Cuba’s southern shore, our man in Havana journeys into the island’s rebel heart

An solar storm erupts on April 16, 2012, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 304 Angstrom wavelength.

New Research

The Solar Storm That Nearly Set the Cold War Ablaze

How radio interference from a 1967 solar storm spooked the U.S. military—and launched space weather forecasting

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