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Edward C.

Arecibo Observatory: The World’s Largest Radio Telescope and the Day It Fell Into Its Own Dish

It weighed Einstein, found alien worlds and spoke to the stars. Then it fell into its own dish, and its own signal may be to blame.

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Arecibo Observatory: The World’s Largest Radio Telescope and the Day It Fell Into Its Own Dish

The Cold War

Relive the global tension of the Cold War. Documenting the Iron Curtain, nuclear bunkers, and the geopolitical standoff that divided the world.

Paldiski: The Closed Soviet Town Where Nuclear Submarines Were Built on Dry Land

Paldiski: The Closed Soviet Town Where Nuclear Submarines Were Built on Dry Land

The Soviet Navy ran two live submarine reactors in a hangar on Estonia's coast for 30 years. When it left in 1994, it sealed what it couldn't take in concrete.

Wünsdorf: The Forbidden City Where the Soviet Army Ruled East Germany

Soviet troops sealed off a Brandenburg forest for forty years and forbade Germans to enter. They watched the Berlin Wall fall from behind their own.

Skrunda-1: The Secret Soviet Radar City That Latvia Blew Up and Sold

The US paid $7 million to blow up a Soviet radar tower in Latvia on live television. The secret town around it was left standing, and later auctioned off.

Dixia Cheng: Beijing's Underground City Built to Survive a Soviet Nuclear War

Mao made 300,000 Beijingers dig a secret nuclear shelter under the city by hand — big enough for half the population. Then everyone forgot it.

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Area 52: The Secret Base Doing the Work Area 51 Is Too Famous For

Area 51 got too famous to hide anything. So America's real secret testing moved 70 miles away, to a base most people have never heard of: Area 52.

Tito's Bunker (ARK D-0): Inside Yugoslavia's Largest Secret Nuclear Command Center

Tito spent 26 years and $4.6 billion secretly digging a nuclear bunker for 350 people under a Bosnian mountain. He never once set foot inside.

Baikonur Cosmodrome: The Secret Spaceport That Hid Rocketry's Worst Disaster

Baikonur gave humanity the stars. It also buried rocketry's worst disaster for 29 years — and lied about its own name.

Vilnius Genocide Museum: The KGB Prison That Erased Lithuanians

For fifty years the Soviet KGB tortured and shot Lithuanians in this Vilnius basement — about 1,000 killed in a room marked 'kitchen.'

McMurdo Station: Antarctica's Largest Settlement and the Nuclear Reactor It Buried at the Bottom of the World

Antarctica's largest base ran on a leaking nuclear reactor for a decade — until cleaning it up forced the U.S. to ship a contaminated mountain home.

Teufelsberg: The American Spy Dome on Top of 75 Million Cubic Yards of Buried Berlin

Eighty meters of broken Berlin cover a Nazi building the Allies couldn't destroy. The Americans put a listening station on top.

Menwith Hill: The Largest American Spy Base on British Soil

The British government has refused to publicly discuss what happens at Menwith Hill for seventy years. Edward Snowden forced part of the answer into the open.

Edward C.

Semipalatinsk: The Soviet Nuclear Polygon That Poisoned a Million People in Secret

Tragedies & Disasters

Semipalatinsk: The Soviet Nuclear Polygon That Poisoned a Million People in Secret

The Soviet Union detonated 456 nuclear bombs on the Kazakh steppe while 1.5 million people lived downwind. A secret clinic studied them instead of warning them.

Beelitz-Heilstätten: Germany's Largest Abandoned Sanatorium That Treated Hitler and the Soviet Army

The German sanatorium that healed Hitler in 1916, hid Honecker in 1991, and held a closed Soviet city in the pines for 50 years — still standing in the forest.

Željava Air Base: Tito's $6 Billion Underground Fortress That Its Own Army Destroyed

The $6 billion underground airbase built to survive a nuclear strike — destroyed in three days by the army that spent 35 years defending it.

Uranium City: Canada's Atomic Ghost Town on the Edge of the World

Canada built a model city in the subarctic to mine uranium for the Cold War. On December 3, 1981, a man in a corporate jet told 5,000 people it was over.

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Diego A.

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Arecibo Observatory: The World’s Largest Radio Telescope and the Day It Fell Into Its Own Dish

The Cold War

Paldiski: The Closed Soviet Town Where Nuclear Submarines Were Built on Dry Land

Wünsdorf: The Forbidden City Where the Soviet Army Ruled East Germany

Skrunda-1: The Secret Soviet Radar City That Latvia Blew Up and Sold

Dixia Cheng: Beijing's Underground City Built to Survive a Soviet Nuclear War

Area 52: The Secret Base Doing the Work Area 51 Is Too Famous For

Tito's Bunker (ARK D-0): Inside Yugoslavia's Largest Secret Nuclear Command Center

Baikonur Cosmodrome: The Secret Spaceport That Hid Rocketry's Worst Disaster

Vilnius Genocide Museum: The KGB Prison That Erased Lithuanians

McMurdo Station: Antarctica's Largest Settlement and the Nuclear Reactor It Buried at the Bottom of the World

Teufelsberg: The American Spy Dome on Top of 75 Million Cubic Yards of Buried Berlin

Menwith Hill: The Largest American Spy Base on British Soil

Semipalatinsk: The Soviet Nuclear Polygon That Poisoned a Million People in Secret

Beelitz-Heilstätten: Germany's Largest Abandoned Sanatorium That Treated Hitler and the Soviet Army

Željava Air Base: Tito's $6 Billion Underground Fortress That Its Own Army Destroyed

Uranium City: Canada's Atomic Ghost Town on the Edge of the World

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Pearl Harbor: The Day That Changed World War II

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