Mao Zedong was a great swimmer. As Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, he was known to take a dip in the pool he ordered built at Party headquarters, in the stormy ocean, and even in China's badly polluted rivers. Mao even used swimming in his diplomacy. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited China in 1958, Mao—who was upset with Khrushchev's policies toward China at the time—invited him to come down to the swimming pool even though he knew Khrushchev could not swim. Khrushchev had to use an innertube while Mao literally swam circles around him.⁶

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev once described Berlin as "the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin."⁷

After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, J. Robert Oppenheimer told President Truman that America's atomic scientists had "blood on our hands." Truman, unconcerned, responded, "Never mind. It'll all come out in the wash."⁸

Edward Teller, "the father of the hydrogen bomb," developed an "Atomic Alphabet" to help his children learn about the atomic bomb. Each letter of the alphabet stood for some component of the nuclear project: "A stands for atom, it is so small no one has ever seen it at all. B stands for bomb, the bombs are much bigger, so brother do not be too fast on the trigger.... S stands for secret, you can keep it forever—provided there is no one abroad who is clever."⁹