Cold War

In 1977, a CIA director sat before the United States Senate and confirmed that his agency had, for over two decades, conducted covert experiments on unwitting American and Canadian citizens. The experiments involved LSD administered without consent, sensory deprivation, electroconvulsive therapy beyond any therapeutic dose, hypnosis, sexual blackmail, and psychological torture. At least one person died as a direct result. Many others suffered permanent psychological damage. The program was called MKULTRA. ...

At 1:23 AM on April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded with a force that blew the 1,000-ton reactor lid clean off its housing. It was the worst nuclear accident in human history — and the Soviet government’s first instinct was to lie about it. Not just to the world. To its own people. To the firefighters it sent in without proper equipment. To the children still playing outside in radioactive rain. ...