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34 unusual facts about iron curtain


1963 European Touring Car Challenge season

Another hillclimb at the Timmelsjoch for round seven, and the final would be held behind the Iron Curtain, in Hungary.

Alexander Kaletski

His works surprised audiences as they showed unexpectedly that behind the Iron Curtain existed not only gloom and sadness, but also humor, beauty and hope.

Alois Mock

In June 1989, in the area of Odenburg, he cut the wire of the Iron Curtain at the fortified border with Communist neighbour Hungary, together with his Hungarian counterpart Gyula Horn.

Anatoli Semenov

With the impending fall of the Iron Curtain now beginning to allow players to leave Russia, Semenov was drafted in the sixth round, 120th overall, by the Edmonton Oilers in the 1989 NHL Entry Draft.

Boizenburg

As per the dictates of the Yalta Conference, Boizenburg was placed just a few kilometers behind the perimeter of the Iron Curtain, otherwise known as the 'Inner German Border'.

Devín

During the Cold War Devín was just inside the Iron Curtain and the northern banks of the Danube and Morava rivers were heavily fortified.

DKW 3=6

The company was effectively refounded in West Germany in 1949, following the loss to the Soviets of its Zwickau assets.Three of the four businesses that had constituted Auto Union before the war seemed unlikely ever to reappear on either side of the Iron Curtain, but starting in 1949 the DKW name was used for the F89 assembled by Auto Union in the west: this was the model replaced by the 3=6.

Eastern Imperial Eagle

There are many Eastern Imperial Eagle nests in the Bulgaria/Turkey section of the European Green Belt (the uncultivated belt along the former Iron Curtain.)

Electrochemical machining

The rise of EDM in the same period slowed ECM research in the west, although work continued behind the Iron Curtain.

Finnish People's Democratic League

At its time, SKDL was one of the largest leftist parties in Western Europe, with its main member party, the Communist Party of Finland, being one of the largest communist parties west of the Iron Curtain.

Fortress Europe

Iron Curtain, dividing line through Europe during the Cold War

Gifhorn

It was built as a centre to promote cultural exchange across Europe, following the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Helen Carter

The Carters were on the first nationally televised network program to feature country music, The Kate Smith Show, and were among the first country music acts to tour behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia.

Highway strip

In the Cold War highway strips were systematically built on both sides of the Iron Curtain, mostly in the two Germanys, but also in North Korea, Republic of China (Taiwan), Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Ian Campbell, 12th Duke of Argyll

Following his military service he worked in banking, then spent four years as a sales executive with Rank Xerox Export, regularly travelling behind the Iron Curtain.

Imre Pozsgay

Jointly with Otto von Habsburg, Imre Pozsgay was the sponsor of the Pan-European Picnic of 19 August 1989, where hundreds of East Germans who were visiting Hungary were able to cross the previously impenetrable Iron Curtain into Austria.

International Association of Women in Radio and Television

During the 1950s through 1980s, IAWRT was a friendship organization between women journalists on either side of the Iron Curtain, intended to promote peace.

Iron Wall

:Not to be confused with Iron Curtain

Jela Špitková

Because of problems with her visa, Špitková could not become a member of the English Chamber Orchestra.

John F. G. Howe

After his rank as a Group Captain was made substantive, in 1973 he was appointed Officer Commanding RAF Gutersloh on the front line of the Cold War Iron Curtain operations.

John Hall Buchanan, Jr.

For fourteen years, he was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, where he championed the rights of people behind the Iron Curtain, especially Jewish and Christian dissidents, as well as the black majorities in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

Josef Špaček

Following the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, however, some degree of reform took place in several of the Iron Curtain countries of central and eastern Europe.

Pankrti

They billed themselves The First Punk Band Behind The Iron Curtain (one of their songs has a title Behind iron curtain old brods are pulling the red beet).

Phil M. Donnelly

Highlights of his first term as governor included overseeing the implementation of a new Missouri state constitution in 1946, creation of the Missouri Department of Revenue, and welcoming international statesman Winston Churchill to Fulton, Missouri for the famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College.

Radoslav Zdravkov

During his professional career, which spanned nearly 20 years, Zdravkov represented Lokomotiv Sofia (1973–80), CSKA Sofia (1980–86), Portugal's G.D. Chaves (1986–89), Sporting de Braga (1989–90), Paços de Ferreira (1990–91) and F.C. Felgueiras (1991–92) - after he had left the Iron Curtain at the age of 30 - Yantra Gabrovo (1992–93) and Litex Lovech (1993–94).

Ray Danton

Danton played American agent Ralph Drake who is sent to Austria to meet with western agents from six Iron Curtain countries after it is revealed that the Soviet Union had named a new head of the secret police.

Reinhard Gehlen

When the Iron Curtain descended in 1946, leaving the Western Allies with virtually no intelligence sources in Eastern Europe, Gehlen’s vast store of knowledge made him very valuable.

Russkiy Toy

The breed was nearly wiped out twice; first following in the 1920s with the rise of Communism due to the toy dog's traditional link to the aristocracy and secondly in the 1990s with the influx of foreign breeds following the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Steel Curtain

The nickname "Steel Curtain", a play on the phrase "Iron Curtain" popularized by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, originated in a 1971 contest sponsored by Pittsburgh radio station WTAE to name the defense.

Tatra 603

To the west of the Iron Curtain the car was unknown, though some were used by Czechoslovak embassies in western capitals.

The Whistle Blower

His bright but naive and idealistic son, Robert (Nigel Havers), works as a linguist at GCHQ a top secret British intelligence listening station, using his love of Russian to listen to various pieces of communication on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Visions du Réel

At its inception, the festival promoted Swiss films and films that were otherwise inaccessible — that is, those created in the Eastern Bloc countries behind the Iron Curtain.

Wargame: AirLand Battle

Relying mostly on heavy infantry formations, it is also the keeper of most the Cold War's heated border, the Iron Curtain.

Wire of Death

Parallels have been made between the Death Wire and the then future Iron Curtain.


1964 T-39 shootdown incident

Residents from the nearby town of Vogelsberg in Thuringia erected a memorial to the three downed pilots, after the "Iron Curtain" had been lifted.

Aérospatiale Super Frelon

In Columbia Pictures' 1988 Soviet/Afghanistan War drama The Beast, the Super Frelon was used to represent Communist-bloc helicopters, being that no examples of Soviet aircraft were available for use due to the existence of the Iron Curtain, which would collapse three years later.

EastWest Institute

EWI was founded in 1980, when current CEO John Edwin Mroz and Ira D. Wallach set out to address areas of political dispute across the Iron Curtain.

H. V. Kaltenborn

He said, "I'd take some bats and balls and gloves and sneak them behind the Iron Curtain and teach them Rooshin kids how to play baseball. Why if Joe Stallion knowed how much money there was in concessions, he'd get out of politics and into an honest business."

Malcolm Andrews

In the early 1970s, he spent five years in Munich working for the US State Department at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcast news behind the Iron Curtain.

Man on a Tightrope

Cernik, inspired by a recent spate of escapes from behind the Iron Curtain, has decided to escape over the border to Bavaria.

Mike Naumenko

Some of Naumenko's songs are more or less faithful translations or remakes of English language source material (the notions of copyright and plagiarism being hardly established in the Soviet Union, especially as regards works created on the other side of the Iron Curtain).

Petr Brandl

Petr Brandl (Peter Johannes Brandl or Jan Petr Brandl) (October 24, 1668 – September 24, 1735) was a painter of the late Baroque, famous in his time but - due to isolation behind the Iron Curtain - rather forgotten until recently.

Puttgarden station

In 1961, a large ferry terminal was built in Puttgarden and in 1963 it was put into operation together with the Fehmarn Sound Bridge, because the traditional ferry from Germany to Denmark between Rostock-Warnemünde and Gedser was at the time beyond the Iron Curtain, and the replacement route from Großenbrode Quay to Gedser was too complicated.

Vladimir Estragon

Both names were chosen by Harth who had favored Samuel Becket as a writer from around 1968 on.Harth interpreted the two characters Wladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot as West Germany and East Germany during the Cold War who are waiting for unification.Surprisingly to everybody the iron curtain collapsed some months after the foundation of the music group Vladimir Estragon.