Please take a moment today to check out this astounding collection of mid-1970s photos from Ujelang Atoll, a Micronesian speck that once played host to nuclear refugees from nearby Enewetak. When these particular photos were taken, the Enewetakese had been in exile for three decades, after being bounced from their homes so the United States […]
Tags:atomic testing·Enewetak·law·Micronesia·nuclear weapons·Ujelang
Followers of Microkhan’s microblog may have noted that I’ve developed a recent fascination with World War II-era combat art, which was created as part of an official War Department program to depict the conflict in oils, inks, and water colors. Once the the war was over, the painting continued as the U.S. speedily developed its […]
Tags:art·atomic testing·Bikini Atoll·nuclear power·World War II
There’s no Earthly chunk of coral that’s more deserving of good news than Bikini Atoll, which the American military infamously bombed to smithereens at the dawn of the Atomic Age. So it was heartening to learn that the island and its immediate surroundings were recently added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, a move that will […]
Yesterday’s cross-country plane ride gave me the chance to catch up with Jon Lee Anderson’s sobering dispatch from Iran, which pretty much cements the notion that the Islamic Republic will never give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Not that I didn’t already know that on some level—as Anderson so eloquently puts it, Iran seems […]
Tags:atomic testing·diplomacy·Iran·nuclear power·South Africa·Vela Incident·weapons
The controversy over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has sent plenty of folks scurrying back to the history books, to examine what made South Africa give up its bomb-building program. In joining the throng, though, we stumbled upon a curious factoid from the annals—an assertion, in an old (and offline) Foreign Affairs article, that South Africa initially […]
We could easily spend the rest of the year—and probably a fair chunk of 2010—blogging exclusively about Cold War nuclear testing. But since doing so would certainly lead to a mass exodus of readers, we’ll spare you the endless geek out. For now, content yourself with this short-yet-fascinating report (PDF) on the Nevada Test Site‘s […]
Tags:Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission·atomic testing·Hiroshima·Japan·Nevada·World War II
There’s such a wealth of fascinating tidbits in this National Nuclear Security Administration archive, it’s hard to know where to begin. Many of the goodies, such as this mind-blowing clip from Operation Castle, will already be familiar to students of atomic-testing history. But others are of a much rarer nature, and some were declassified just […]
Tags:Alaska·Amchitka·atomic testing·movies·Operation Castle·sea otters·weapons
