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The October Revolution, also known as the Soviet Revolution, refers to a revolution that began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd – regarded as a coup d’état by the worker and soldier masses. It was the second phase of the overall Russian Revolution of 1917 and it overthrew the Russian Provisional Government, giving power to the Bolshevik-dominated Soviets.

Initially, the event was referred to as the October uprising, but, with time, the term October Revolution came into use. The revolution was influenced by the mounting frustration of workers and soldiers that erupted in July 1917 with several days of rioting on the streets. After suppressing the riots, the government blamed the Bolsheviks for encouraging the rebellion. Radical anti-war social democrats merged with the Bolsheviks in August.

On October 10, 1917, the Bolsheviks’ Central Committee voted for a resolution that said that an armed uprising was inevitable. On October 23, Bolshevik leader Jaan Anvelt led his revolutionaries in an uprising in Tallinn. On October 25, Bolsheviks led their forces in the uprising in Saint Petersburg, the capital of Russia. For the most part, the revolt was bloodless.

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The Battle of Lesnaya was one of the decisive battles of the Great Northern War. It took place on September 28, 1708 between a Russian army of 12,000 men commanded by Princes Repnin and Menshikov and a Swedish force of 16,000 men, under the command of General Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt, at the village of Lesnaya, located on the border between Poland and Russia.

Lewenhaupt, one of Sweden’s foremost generals, was the commander of one of his country’s best armies, based at the Baltic Sea port of Riga. In the summer of 1708, King Charles XII of Sweden ordered him to march southward with most of his force and link up with Charles’ main army of 25,000 men based in Poland. The Russians observed these movements and decided the time was ripe to attack Lewenhaupt’s smaller force. Lewenhaupt was not fazed; no Swedish army had yet been defeated by Russians in eight years of war.

The battle itself was closely contested and both forces suffered heavy casualties. Late in the day, a snowstorm kicked up and the Swedes became disorganized. Lewenhaupt ordered his men to retreat. Menshikov ordered his cavalry to attack one more time and routed the Swedes. The Swedes lost 1,000 men and 4,000 missing in battle. Russian casualties totaled 1,111 killed and 2,856 wounded. The Russian victory at Lesnaya convinced their soldiers that they could defeat even Sweden’s best soldiers.

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The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia on June 30, 1908. The explosion was most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of five to ten kilometers above Earth’s surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates for the object’s size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of meters across.

Although, the meteor or comet burst in the air rather than directly hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range are from five megatons to as high as 30 megatons or TNT, with 10-15 megatons the most likely – about 1000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and about one third the power of Tsar Bomba.

The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers. It is estimated that the earthquake from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. The Tunguska Event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth’s recent history.

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The Moscow-Washington hot line is a system that allows direct communication between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union. It was originally designed by the Harris Corporation and is also known as the “red telephone,” linking the White House via the National Military Command Center with the Kremlin during the Cold War.

The “Hot Line,” as it would come to be known, was established following an agreement on June 20, 1963 by the signing of the “Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Line” in Geneva, Switzerland, after the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis made it clear that reliable, direct communications between the two nuclear powers was a necessity. White House advisers at the time thought that the crisis could have been more quickly resolved and easily averted if communication had been faster.

The first generation of the hot line had no voice element at all and the memorandum called for a full-time duplex wire telegraph circuit. The first use of the hot line was in 1967, during the six-day Egypt-Israel War, when both superpowers informed each other of military moves that might have been provocative or ambiguous.

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Valentina Tereshkova was born in Bolshoye Maslennikovo. She became interested in parachuting at a young age and trained at the local Aeroclub, making her first jump at age 22. It was her expertise in parachute jumping that led to her selection as a cosmonaut.

After Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space in 1961, Sergey Korolyov, the head Soviet rocket engineer, came up with the idea of putting a woman in space. On February 16, 1962, Tereshkova was selected to join the female cosmonaut corps. Out of more than 400 applicants, five were selected. Tereshkova was considered a particularly worthy candidate, partly due to her “proletarian” background, and because her father had died as a war hero during World War II.

Training included weightless flights, isolation tests, centrifuge tests, rocket theory, spacecraft engineering and so on. After several months of intensive training concluding with examinations, four candidates were commissioned in the Soviet Air Force. Tereshkova was nominated to pilot the Vostok 6 which launched on June 16, 1963. Although she was in a state of nausea and physical discomfort for much of the flight, she orbited the Earth 48 times and spent almost three days in space.

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