Daniel heard the term "third world country" on the news. So he asked his mom what it meant.

And the answer surprised both of them.

Most people hear "third world" and assume it means a poor country, or a struggling one. That's not what it originally meant at all. The real story starts in the early 1950s, in the middle of one of the most tense periods in modern history — and the term has almost nothing to do with wealth.

After World War Two, the world was divided by two enormous powers facing off against each other. The United States and its allies on one side. The Soviet Union and its allies on the other. Each with a completely different idea about how countries should be run. This period was called the Cold War — and almost every country in the world was being pulled toward one side or the other.

The First World was the Un ...