Cold War

Some of the earliest surviving banknotes and a Cold War nuclear radiation calculator are among 325 historic objects unearthed by the Bank of England to celebrate its 325th anniversary. Britain's central bank is the second oldest in the world after that of Sw…

In April 1949, the poet Pablo Neruda strolled onstage at the First World Congress of Partisans for Peace, in Paris, and apologized for being late. Hed been unavoidably detained, he joked. Over the preceding months, hed lived in hiding, shuttling between a ser…

Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Images from the Apollo 11 mission were projected onto the Washington Monument in Washington DC Thousands of people have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. On 20 July 1969, the Eagle m…

Photo via Nasa. Happy anniversary everybody, YouTube host Matt Billon says into the camera. Fifty years ago, they faked going to the moon. Its an amazing accomplishment. I hope theyre celebrating with something big... he says while trailing off to think of …

LONDON — Fifty years after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins blasted off for the moon, a new space race is on. It is one that may affect the future of humanity even more than its Cold War predecessor, both on earth and in the wider cosmos. As a…

Just beyond a long, elegant hall of mostly headless, ancient Greek statues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City lies a chunk of Jimi Hendrixs guitar, which the rock legend doused in lighter fluid, lit ablaze, and slammed into the ground at the M…

The was housed in a former underwear factory overlooking the Charles River, now long since demolished. The Apollo engineers and programmers labored at scuffed metal desks in cubicles with code scribbled on the chalkbo…

Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin salutes the American flag on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. Aldrin was the second man to ever step foot on the lunar surface. The first was Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11's mission commander. Fifty years ago, Nei…

According to NASAs chief historian, Bill Barry, this one decision set a course that the space race would follow for years to come. Once you do that, he explained, you bake in all of the stuff thats already there. For example, that there are no African-America…

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Anyone old enough to remember will likely tell you exactly where they were when NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong declared those words as he stepped foot on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. …