On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Fortunately, the pilot survived and eventually returned home to the United States, but his mission went unfinished. Originally, the U-2 mission had begun to confirm the "missile gap" that so many in the Pentagon were sure existed between the allegedly gargantuan missile stockpile the Soviets possessed and the tiny missile force sported by the Pentagon. At the time, lawmakers estimated that the Soviets possessed about 500 ICBM’s. It turns out that they had exactly four. In 1960, the United States was the country with … Continue reading John XXIII and Murray Rothbard