All in Military
One of New York’s honoured New Year’s Eve traditions is the Times Square ‘ball drop’ which starts at 11:59pm on December 31 and ends at precisely 0:00 on New Year’s Day. The ‘time ball’ was originally a visual way to signal time to ships in harbours so they could synchronise their ship clocks - accurate time being a critical way to know your longitude at sea.
What to do when you’ve gots to get your cola but you’ve got no hard currency? In 1989, the Soviet Union paid for a whopping $3b worth of Pepsi with 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate and a destroyer. Had Pepsi chosen to re-operationalise their newly acquired military hardware, they’d have been the 6th largest military power in the world and the 4th largest submarine power.
