Skip to main content

Understanding the Cold War: A Quiz on Key Events and Figures

Test your knowledge of the Cold War with this quiz covering key events, figures, and historical contexts.

#Cold War #History #Geopolitics #Cuba #Non-Aligned Movement #Korean Air Lines Flight 007 #Vasili Arkhipov

1 What was the Congo Crisis a part of?

2 Where is Cheyenne Mountain located?

3 What preceded the Sandinista National Liberation Front?

4 Where is The Heritage Foundation located?

5 The Soviet Union formed an alliance with Fidel Castro-led ________ after the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

6 Who of the following is/was the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement?

7 [62] The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" from "Stettin in the Baltic to ________ in the Adriatic."

8 Where does the Occupation of Japan come from?

9 What type of incident was Korean Air Lines Flight 007?

10 Which of the following battles did Vasili Arkhipov take part in?

💡 Interesting Facts

  • the Autumn of Nations, which began in Poland, marked the end of the Cold War.
  • the Corfu Channel Incident, involving the United Kingdom and Albania, is considered one of the early episodes of the Cold War.
  • the Athénée Palace hotel in Bucharest, Romania, now a Hilton, may have been Europe's most notorious den of spies in the years leading up to World War II, and only slightly less so during the Cold War.
  • the 1991 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy has been called a major political accomplishment of the post-Cold War era.
  • people used home-made balloons and submarines to escape across the inner German border between East and West Germany during the Cold War.
  • the 1959 NBC series Five Fingers features David Hedison as an American counterintelligence officer in the Cold War who poses as a theatrical agent to investigate communist activities in Europe.
  • the High Arctic relocation of 87 Inuit people in the Cold War was called "one of the worst human rights violations in the history of Canada" by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
  • the Hotel Bellevue Palace in Berne (pictured) was called "the best-protected building in Europe" by participants in Cold War negotiations.
  • the movie I Am Cuba was filmed in 1964 as Cold War Soviet propaganda but only became widely viewed internationally when it was shown to audiences in the United States in 1994.
  • the obscure T-44 Soviet medium tank, designed and first built in Kharkiv, Ukraine, was the missing link between the T-34 of WWII and the T-54/55 series of the Cold War.
  • the efforts by Taiwan to distinguish itself from mainland China have their roots in the Cold War of the 1950s.
  • the Philharmonia Hungarica made the first complete recording of Haydn's symphonies, was an orchestra founded by Hungarian exiles and funded by the West German government during the Cold War.
  • the K-1000 class was a hoax class of battleship made up by the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War as propaganda.
  • one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's first state visits was to Mongolia, aimed at rebuilding their bilateral relations in the post-Cold War era.
  • in the film Kommandør Treholt & ninjatroppen, real-life convicted spy Arne Treholt is presented as the leader of a band of ninjas who saved Norway during the Cold War.
  • Igor Britanov captained the Soviet submarine K-219 when it sank northeast of Bermuda during the Cold War.
  • at the height of the Cold War, U.S. President Ronald Reagan committed a microphone gaffe when he joked that he had signed legislation to bomb Russia.
  • Building 470 at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland housed fermentor tanks for producing Bacillus anthracis during the Cold War.
  • Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, who had been deputy chief of Navy intelligence in World War II, later narrated the NBC Cold War docudrama Behind Closed Doors, titled after one of his own books.
  • Dave Brubeck's The Real Ambassadors was largely based on the goodwill tours of Louis Armstrong and other jazz musicians on behalf of the U.S. State Department during the Cold War.
  • Hungarian ballerina Nora Kovach's 1953 defection to the West was the first highly publicized Cold War-era defection of individuals in the field of dance.
  • at the height of the Cold War, Lynne Cox became the first person to swim from the USA to the USSR.
  • during the Cold War, Soviet leaders used "And you are lynching Negroes..." as an ad hominem attack against the U.S..
  • in 1990, it was revealed that a stay-behind army backed by NATO had been active in Switzerland throughout the Cold War, preparing for a possible Soviet invasion.
  • in his first TV series, Crusader (CBS, 1955–1956), Brian Keith portrayed fictional journalist Matt Anders, who during the Cold War liberates oppressed people from communism.
  • in 1989, Michel Hansenne was elected the first post-Cold War Director-General of the International Labour Organization.
  • during the midst of the Cold War, Alan Shulman and Dmitri Shostakovich were invited to join a Soviet–American composers' symposium organised by Nicolas Slonimsky for NBC.
  • during the Cold War, Canada permitted the United States to practice photo reconnaissance over Grey Goose Island with the RB-52C Stratofortress.
  • cosmonauts such as Grigori Nelyubov, dismissed from the Soviet space program, were airbrushed out of official photographs, leading to early Cold War speculation of failed missions even when the actual reasons for dismissal were sometimes mundane.
    • Previous Quiz Next Quiz

    Related Quizzes

    Key Events and Figures of the 13th Century: A Quiz

    #13th century #history #Mongol Empire #Crusades #European culture #Franciscan order #Cambridge #Boyana Church

    Discovering the 14th Century: A Historical Quiz

    #14th Century #History #Renaissance #Ming Dynasty #Hundred Years' War #Petrarch #Military History

    Exploring the 16th Century: Events, Figures, and Discoveries

    #history #16th century #exploration #Renaissance #Conquistadores #art #politics #religion

    Exploring the 17th Century: Key Events and Figures

    #17th century #history #empires #Mughal Empire #Ottoman Empire #Persian Empire #Taiwan #Hudson's Bay Company #Kara Mustafa #French history

    Exploring the 18th Century: A Historical Quiz

    #18th century #history #quiz #education #literature #philosophy #politics

    Significant Events of 1904

    #1904 #history #events #quiz #education

    Significant Events and Figures of 1906

    #1906 #history #chess #astronomy #civil rights #swimming #biochemistry

    Significant Events and Figures of 1911

    #1911 #history #events #figures #Nobel Prize #aviation #fire incidents #education #composers