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The Fart That Killed 10,000 People, and Other Weird Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan July 18, 2020 34 min

Wheel - Panjandrum — The Great Panjandrum. War History Online

12. ET Might Have Ended the Cold War

Reagan and Gorbachev at the 1985 Geneva Summit. Wikimedia

US President Ronald Reagan had a sunny disposition and demeanor, that went hand in hand with his implacable detestation of communism and the USSR. His single-minded focus on challenging what he termed “The Evil Empire”, and dragging the Soviets into an arms buildup competition that its economy could not sustain, contributed greatly to the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse. However, there was one weird field where Reagan was more than happy to cooperate with our communist rivals: fighting extraterrestrials.

As Mikhail Gorbachev recounted, he was strolling around a garden with Reagan during the 1985 Geneva Summit, when Reagan blurted out of the blue: “What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?” Gorbachev replied that the USSR would help us out against ET. That greatly pleased the American president – apparently, the threat of alien attack had been gnawing at Reagan, a lifelong sci-fi nerd, for years.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.