Things we believed during the Cold War that ended up being wrong

Truth is the first casualty of war, and that's the case even when the war in question is chilled to the point of absolute zero. The Cold War was a half-century wang-measuring contest that, like most wang-measuring contests, threatened to spill over into violence if either participant felt their manhood was coming up short. Except the wangs in question were substantial nuclear arsenals, and the participants had a resource typically not available to bros in locker room contests: a well-oiled propaganda machine.