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Future

Moon Talk: Did Tito Secretly Hand Over Yugoslav Space Program To JFK?

An upcoming documentary lays out an intriguing new twist in the historical saga of the Cold War space race: Yugoslavia had secretly made major advances in space travel technology. Did Yugoslav leader Tito make a pact with President Kennedy that would chan

USSR stamp for the 90th Birth Anniversary of Josip Broz Tito in 1982.
USSR stamp for the 90th Birth Anniversary of Josip Broz Tito in 1982.

*NEWSBITES

The history of space exploration is full of conspiracy theories – and a new one is in the making about a country that didn't seem to have any association with space research: the former Yugoslavia.

The country's president for life, Josip Broz Tito, was the subject of much speculation during his lifetime. Many thought he was a spy for the Russians, others suspected he worked for the Americans. And it was under his leadership that in Bosnia, in 1957, construction began on Europe's largest underground airport.

The high-security facility called "Objekat 505" could even resist nuclear attack. It was said to have cost over $6 billion, which seemed a lot for a mere airport. Was Tito simply extravagant, or was there perhaps more to the site than met the eye?

"Houston We Have a Problem" is the title of a documentary film by Slovenia's Zige Virca, due to be released in early 2013, that gives conspiracy theorists new fodder.

According to Virca, a Croatian-born rocket engineer named Hermann Potocnik published a book in 1929 called The Problem of Space Travel: The Rocket Motor in which he develops concepts for building satellites and space stations. The association for space travel that Wernher von Braun belonged to drew up the space station concept in 1952 based on Potocnik's studies.

Stories made the rounds that there was a lot more useful information in Potocnik's lost diaries. The CIA had searched for them, but the Yugoslavian security services were faster – and thus was the country able to forge their own space program of which "Objekat 505" was part and parcel.

By 1961, Tito was thought to have the technology needed to fly to the moon. Because the U.S. under no circumstances wanted to lose the space race with the Soviet Union, Virca says that the Kennedy administration handed over major cash in development funds to Tito in exchange for the Yugoslav space program.

A year later, Kennedy announced that the U.S. would shortly be flying to the moon, and the Americans managed to get there before the Russians did. Meanwhile, Tito traded in his partisan's uniform for elegant tailoring, Yugoslavia's economy exploded... and the rest is history.

Read the full story in German by Filip Gaspar

Photo - Wikipedia

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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Society

Influencer Union? The Next Labor Rights Battle May Be For Social Media Creators

With the end of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, the creator economy is the next frontier for organized labor.

​photograph of a smartphone on a selfie stick

Smartphone on a selfie stick

Steve Gale/Unsplash
David Craig and Stuart Cunningham

Hollywood writers and actors recently proved that they could go toe-to-toe with powerful media conglomerates. After going on strike in the summer of 2023, they secured better pay, more transparency from streaming services and safeguards from having their work exploited or replaced by artificial intelligence.

But the future of entertainment extends well beyond Hollywood. Social media creators – otherwise known as influencers, YouTubers, TikTokers, vloggers and live streamers – entertain and inform a vast portion of the planet.

✉️ You can receive our Bon Vivant selection of fresh reads on international culture, food & travel directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

For the past decade, we’ve mapped the contours and dimensions of the global social media entertainment industry. Unlike their Hollywood counterparts, these creators struggle to be seen as entertainers worthy of basic labor protections.

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