Today in military history: US tests first hydrogen bomb
On Nov. 1, 1952, the U.S. tested the first hydrogen bomb. After the United States dropped two atomic weapons on Japan in World War II, the government did not pursue…
The US plan to survive a Soviet nuke was absolutely bonkers
A sudden flash. A mushroom cloud. A sudden expanding pressure wave. In the event of a thermonuclear attack, seeing these things means its probably too late to survive. So the U.S. developed warning systems to give Americans a heads up before the bom…
That time we almost launched the atomic bomb on North Korea
On November 30, 1950, the United States was deeply entrenched in the Korean War after suffering a surprise attack on its troops. On this day, President Truman issued the thinly veiled…
How German nuclear scientists reacted to news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
The United States wasn’t the only country working on creating the world’s first atomic bomb during World War II. The British had their own atomic weapons program at the beginning…
Here’s how a physicist lit his cigarette with a nuclear-bomb explosion
There are all kinds of strange ways to light up a cigarette, from blowtorches to magnifying glasses. But few people on Earth have ever used as bizarre or overkill a method as devised by a Cold War physicist: the explosion of a nuclear bomb.
On…
Why Albert Einstein begged the US to build an atomic bomb
On Aug. 2, 1939, one month before the outbreak of World War II, Albert Einstein, the famous German-born physicist, signed a two-page letter to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt that would help bring the US into the nuclear arms race and change the …
Seattle’s 6 secrets of surviving atomic attacks
Do you know what to do when the bombs fall? When the Soviet planes fill the skies and create an endless rain of hellfire on the cities of America? If not, the Seattle Municipal Archives have you covered, because they have a pamphlet from 1950 that i…