Five interesting facts about one of my favorite countries, Russia.

1. Russia can fit Pluto in its borders.

2. In 1959, Luna-2 became the first man-made vehicle to land on the Moon; the Soviets took the first pictures of the Moon’s dark side, launched the first artificial satellite to orbit the Moon, delivered the first lunar rover on the Moon, and managed to take their own samples of the Moon’s soil back to Earth, although a year after the Americans had with the Apollo 11 mission. All in all, Soviet scientists were in a tight race with their NASA counterparts credited for the historic breakthrough of Apollo 11.

3. Russians smuggled booze into space.

4. The Soviet Salyut program paved the way for the International Space Station.

5. Russians were first to land a spacecraft on Venus.

Here is the whole thing. It's very interesting:
https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/330704-is-pluto-smaller-than-russia

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At https://lichess.org/ I play chess against Russians almost every day. What bugs me is they almost always beat me. Russians are the best chess players in the world.

This blog has 56 posts about Russia at Russia.