Discovery of nuclear fission
Uranium splits — the road to nuclear power and the bomb
In December 1938 Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann found that uranium nuclei split when bombarded with neutrons; Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch explained the process. The discovery led to both nuclear power and the atomic bomb.
Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
Three months after the Munich Agreement, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin discovered the fission of uranium. The road to the atomic bomb began there.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 20 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 1 year later
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 9 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 10 years later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 11 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 9 years earlier
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 2 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 3 years later
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 4 years later
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 7 years later
Middle East
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 23 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 22 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 22 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 6 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 10 years later
Africa
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 16 years earlier
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 3 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 18 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 20 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 22 years later
Asia
- 1931 China floods — 7 years earlier
- 1934–1935 Long March — 4 years earlier
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 7 years later
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — 7 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 15 years later
Americas
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 24 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 9 years earlier
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 8 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 7 years later
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 9 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 2 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 3 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 4 years later
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 16 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 21 years later
Alive at the time
- Nikola Tesla (aged 82)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 69)
- Winston Churchill (aged 64)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 60)
- Albert Einstein (aged 59)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 57)
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (aged 57)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 49)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 49)
- Mao Zedong (aged 45)