The Castle Bravo test at Bikini
Expected 6 megatons, got 15 and radioactive snow
On 1 March 1954 the US detonated a thermonuclear device at Bikini: a calculation error made it 15 megatons instead of the expected six, the largest American explosion ever. White radioactive ash fell on Rongelap Atoll and on the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5, whose radio operator later died. Bikini's own people had been moved off in 1946 and were never able to return home.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 15 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 9 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 7 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 6 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 5 years earlier
Europe
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 21 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 18 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 13 years earlier
- 1952 Great Smog of London — 2 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 1 year earlier
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 13 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 12 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 9 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 3 years later
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 7 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 22 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 6 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 25 years later
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 2 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 4 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 6 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 9 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 13 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 9 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 1 year earlier
- 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu — same year
- 1955–1975 Vietnam War — 1 year later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 21 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 25 years earlier
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 1 year later
- 1959 Cuban Revolution — 5 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 15 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 16 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 80)
- Albert Einstein (aged 75)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 73)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 65)
- Mao Zedong (aged 61)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 36)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 25)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 24)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 20)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 70)