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N0KFQ > TODAY 29.08.10 23:32l 57 Lines 2778 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Aug 29
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From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@WW
Aug 29, 1949:
Soviets explode atomic bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR
successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name "First
Lightning." In order to measure the effects of the blast, the
Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges, and other
civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. They also
placed animals in cages nearby so that they could test the
effects of nuclear radiation on human-like mammals. The atomic
explosion, which at 20 kilotons was roughly equal to "Trinity,"
the first U.S. atomic explosion, destroyed those structures and
incinerated the animals.
According to legend, the Soviet physicists who worked on the
bomb were honored for the achievement based on the penalties
they would have suffered had the test failed. Those who would
have been executed by the Soviet government if the bomb had
failed to detonate were honored as "Heroes of Socialist Labor,"
and those who would have been merely imprisoned were given "The
Order of Lenin," a slightly less prestigious award.
On September 3, a U.S. spy plane flying off the coast of Siberia
picked up the first evidence of radioactivity from the
explosion. Later that month, President Harry S. Truman announced
to the American people that the Soviets too had the bomb. Three
months later, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who had
helped the United States build its first atomic bombs, was
arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. While
stationed at U.S. atomic development headquarters during World
War II, Fuchs had given the Soviets precise information about
the U.S. atomic program, including a blueprint of the "Fat Man"
atomic bomb later dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and everything the
Los Alamos scientists knew about the hypothesized hydrogen bomb.
The revelations of Fuchs' espionage, coupled with the loss of
U.S. atomic supremacy, led President Truman to order development
of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times
more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated
"Mike," the world's first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll
in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear
device instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a
crater more than a mile wide. Three years later, on November 22,
1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the
same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now
in possession of the so-called "superbomb," and the world lived
under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in
history.
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