SOVIET TITANIUM SHOVEL During the Cold War, titanium was heavily restricted, could only be sold as a finished good, not raw stock. So a clever, corrupt Soviet general figured out the cheapest finished product was shovelheads. They ran sheets of titanium through a metal press and sold them to the highest bidder - a cutout for the US DoD of course, specifically the Air Force material requisition office. The titanium was then processed into construction of the SR-71 Blackbird. The scheme was caught out, the General "did the right thing" and the whole thing was hushed up until after the fall of the Soviet Union. A few years later a few crates of un-shipped shovelheads were found in storage and sold as historical novelties.