In college, I was surprised by the excitement of those in the student union who were hovering over the headlines in the local newspaper: "Russia Launches the First Satellite...'Sputnik.'" Russia had won the "race to space." How could Russia, where the majority of the population had only learned to read and write in the last fifty years, outdo the United States? Here's how: in 1945 the Allies allocated Berlin to Russia. Russia seized German scientists and Jewish intellectuals in countries from the Baltic to the Adriatic, thus acquiring a new talent pool of the brightest minds in Europe. Its edge over the United States in the "space race" succeeded because of a diverse talent pool of harnessed diversity. This caused US leaders to evaluate their own scientists. The United States realized that the only way to win the "space race" was to expand the educational system to include all races and cultures.