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Article: Nuclear Weapons
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
derive their energy from the splitting (fission) or combination (fusion) of atomic nuclei. This category of weapons taken together may have finally fulfilled the wish of technologists throughout history for a weapon so terrible that it would make war between great powers obsolete. The twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history, yet no two nations possessing nuclear weapons fought a major war against one another.
The nuclear era began with the Manhattan Project, the secret American effort during World War II to construct an atomic bomb. On 6 July 1945 the world's first atomic explosion was created during a test in the New Mexico desert. On 6 and ...