Sometimes The Onion is so funny it hurts: USSR Wins Space Race As U.S. Shuts Down Shuttle Program.
MOSCOW, USSR--Less than a week after the return of the Atlantis orbiter marked the end of the U.S. space shuttle program, the crowded streets and textile factories of Moscow erupted in celebration as the USSR officially declared victory over the United States in the Space Race.
"At long last, our great Soviet republic has conquered the West and achieved technological and ideological superiority over America," Kremlin representative Sergei Voronin said Wednesday, announcing the achievement to an audience of joyous beet farmers and steel factory laborers assembled in Red Square. "We have established our unrivaled dominion over the stars and planets and stand now at the dawn of a new era, an era in which the tenets of communism shall echo loudly across the Earth's entire expanse."
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Sources confirmed that in commemoration of the capitalist defeat, extra bread and corn rations had been approved in all major cities, and factory workers were given time off their nine-hour work shifts to join in the festivities. Throughout the Eastern Bloc, pitchforks, hammers, Soviet flags, and large banners adorned with the face of Lenin were seen waving in the air as the excitement of the victory quickly spread.
"When we saw footage of the Atlantis touching down for the very last time, everyone in the tractor factory exploded with unbridled joy at the triumph of our republic," said Kiev assembly-line operator Yaroslav Biryukov, who marched in unison with a batch of laborers while loud refrains of the Soviet national anthem rang out through the streets. "We must now, all of us, work harder, harder than ever to seize this great moment in history."