Cold War history – Link Salads

David Brent dancing in the Wernham Hogg office while Vogons stamp paperwork and read a Sun newspaper headline about Gorbachev taking power, with Tim Canterbury looking at the camera

Link Salad – 11 March: Vogons, Newspapers, and the Day Gorbachev Took Over

Published 2026-03-11

Today’s link salad starts with the birthday of Douglas Adams, born on 11 March 1952 in Cambridge. Adams created The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the bureaucratic alien race known as the Vogons spend their time stamping forms, filing paperwork and reciting terrible poetry. From science fiction bureaucracy we move to real-world media power. […]

Daily Link Salad

Surreal montage showing Malenkov and Khrushchev dancing in Soviet military uniforms to Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights behind Alan Sugar in the Canary Wharf Apprentice boardroom.

Dance of the Soviets

Updated 2026-03-06

Some dates in history produce strange coincidences. Others produce moments where one death completely overshadows another. 5 March 1953 is one of those rare days. On that day Joseph Stalin died. For the Soviet Union — and much of the world — it marked the end of one of the most powerful and brutal regimes […]

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