My favourite is the story that there was mass panic over a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds where everyone thought a real alien invasion was happening. I heard this story as a kid and really thought this was a cruel prank played by the radio station.
In reality, they made it clear at the beginning of the broadcast, and twice during, that it was fictional. Not that many people were listening and most of the people who were, were aware it wasn’t real. A few idiots freaked out and it somehow turned into a story of mass panic. It was propaganda by newspapers to discredit radio.
There was a gap in [some military capability] during the Cold War, and the USA was losing it. Almost anything you stick in there, Russia was behind. They sometimes implied otherwise, but it’s rare that they ever were. Occasionally, they used everything they had to just about match.
By the 1960s, their navy was pretty good, though. Don’t let anyone tell you they were just a bunch of vodka drunk idiots. Not at that time, anyway.
At the opposite end of what this thread is about, Dr Strangelove is far more correct than it should be.
The cruiser gap as an example. Was never real, it only existed because of the US Navy classification system of time.
The US Navy would call ships frigate or destroyer leader when they had the size and capabilities of a cruiser in the Soviet navy. The 1975 Ship reclassification cleared it up and also made organization much easier than the dozens of confusing hull designation.
I like the part where we saw the MiG-25, freaked out because it looked very capable, built the F-15 to actually exceed those capabilities, and then only found out after the fact that the MiG-25 wasn’t nearly as good as we thought.