For this story, imagine Vladimir Putin dressed as a giant crane, hang-gliding through the air. You are not dreaming.
Soviet medallions scattered on Moon in 1959
Luna II becomes the first man-made object to impact the lunar surface, and the first to reach a cosmic body other than the Earth.
In a move that was sheer propaganda, the Soviets placed a stainless steel sphere (identical to the one displayed here from the Cosmosphere Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas) aboard the Luna II spacecraft. The sphere was covered with medallions stamped with the emblem of the Soviet Union and the year 1959.
When Luna II impacted the Moon, the sphere was ejected, scattering the medallions across the lunar surface. It was the Soviet version of a calling card, announcing to all who followed that the Soviet Union had been the first to the moon.
Russian elections: As activists protest, Putin shrugs the reaction off
- 550 arrested in Russia during protests of Putin’s election source
» But Putin’s shrugging it off: Despite allegations suggesting that Putin benefitted from a corrupt electoral process, Putin’s shrugging it off as a part of the political process. “Of course there were irregularities,” he allegedly told an audience of lawyers. “They must all be weeded out and explained so that everybody understands everything.” Regarding the dispersal of protests, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs turned the West’s own protests back on them, saying the dispersal was ”many times more humane than what we saw with the dispersal of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and the tent camps in Europe.”
