A Famous Piece of Trivia on September 26th: The Day the World Almost Ended.

On September 26, 1983, the Soviet Union's nuclear early warning system suddenly sounded an alarm, indicating that the United States had launched 5 intercontinental ballistic missiles towards the USSR. Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel on duty at the time, calmly judged that it must be a system error (believing that if the US were to launch a nuclear war, they wouldn't do so with just 5 missiles). He withstood immense pressure and decided not to report it to his superiors to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike. It was later confirmed that it was indeed a false alarm caused by a Soviet satellite mistaking the sun's glare on clouds for missile launches. Petrov's rationality and composure successfully prevented a full-scale nuclear war that could have destroyed the Earth. Therefore, he is also known as 'The Man Who Saved the World'.