History

Sunday, 3 May 2026
42 facts about Kyshtym disaster
42 facts about Kyshtym disaster
The first nuclear accident in Earth's history
Before information about it saw the light of day, the Soviets hid it for over 30 years. The explosion at the Mayak combine was the first nuclear accid ...

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Mali Empire
Under Mansa Musa, the center of writing was in Timbuktu.
Timbuktu is a city in Mali, on the Niger River. Founded in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, f ...
Masada
The expansion of Masada took place in three stages.
After 37 BC, an irrigation system was built (12 water tanks were carved into the rock), the constru ...
Jamestown
Pocahontas married a successful tobacco planter, John Rolfe, in 1614.
Soon after, she gave birth to a boy named Thomas Rolfe and left for England in 1617 with her husband ...
Kyshtym disaster
At the same time as the construction of the Mayak complex, work was being carried out on a workers' settlement - the town of Ozyorsk.
Initially, the town was called Base-10 (until 1954), Chelyabinsk-40 (until 1966), and Chelyabinsk-65 ...
Kyshtym disaster
When the Americans completed the "Manhattan Project" in 1945, the Soviets did not have the infrastructure, schematics, and materials necessary to participate in the nuclear weapons race.
The Manhattan Project was a secret U.S. government plan to obtain nuclear energy and use it to produ ...
Kyshtym disaster
From the very beginning, the reactor at the Mayak complex faced a number of problems.
Inadequate cooling of the reactor caused the fuel to fuse with graphite. Pressure from Stalin meant ...
Ancient Sumer
The Sumer used cuneiform script, which dates back to the period between 3,300 and 3,100 B.C.
Initially, it had the form of pictograms, that later were transformed into word-syllable. Cuneiform writing is considered the oldest writing in the world.
Jamestown
There are several theories why the colony needed so many years to start running the settlement with success.
The initial governing party demanded that the settlers focus on agriculture, but it is suspected tha ...
Medieval world
Vikings did not wear horned helmets. Such a vision of the Scandinavian warriors only came into existence in the 19th century thanks to the painters of that time who colored the figures of the invaders in this way.
To this day, archaeologists have not found a single Viking helmet with horns. As a rule, Vikings wore no helmets at all or simple conical helmets made of leather or iron.
Kyshtym disaster
Not all villages within the contamination radius were evacuated.
One of the settlements that was not resettled was Tatar Karabolka, located about 30 kilometers from ...