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In 1958, America accidentally dropped a nuclear weapon on two little girls’ playhouse For certain rural residents of the Carolinas during the Cold War, apocalyptic anxiety hit disturbingly close to home. In 1958 and 1961, the American Air Force lost nuclear weapons over the skies of South and North Carolina, respectively, raining potential apocalypse on the folks below. In both incidents, complete catastrophe was avoided thanks to that ever-potent combination of foresight and unmitigated dumb luck. And in the former incident, the bomb fell square on some unsuspecting children's playhouse. The first accident occurred over Florence, South Carolina on March...

U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb. A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view, originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build a nuclear warhead in 2003. The most recent report, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so. Senior U.S. officials say Israel does...

Actual Test Was Success Japan developed and successfully tested an atomic bomb three days prior to the end of the war. She destroyed unfinished atomic bombs, secret papers and her atomic bomb plans only hours before the advance units of the Russian Army moved into Konan, Korea, site of the project. Japanese scientists who developed the bomb are now in Moscow, prisoners of the Russians. They were tortured by their captors seeking atomic "know-how." The Konan area is under rigid Russian control. They permit no American to visit the area. Once, even after the war, an American B-29 Superfortress en...

They risked their lives to capture on film hundreds of blinding flashes, rising fireballs and mushroom clouds. The blast from one detonation hurled a man and his camera into a ditch. When he got up, a second wave knocked him down again. Then there was radiation. While many of the scientists who made atom bombs during the cold war became famous, the men who filmed what happened when those bombs were detonated made up a secret corps. Their existence and the nature of their work has emerged from the shadows only since the federal government began a concerted effort to...

Sixty-five years after the United States dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, effectively ending World War II and ushering in an era of nuclear dread, the US sent its first delegation to the annual ceremony to remember the over 100,000 Japanese who lost their lives in the bombing. Britain and France also sent representatives for the first time. While some Japanese hailed the presence of the US and other nuclear powers as a sign of commitment to eventual nuclear disarmament, for others it was too little, too late. Some Japanese still want an apology for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and...

Here are video reports on today’s observance in Hiroshima, Japan of the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb by the United States on Japan. President Harry Truman made the decision to drop the bomb after warning Japan repeatedly the terrible weapon was coming and would be used if they did not surrender. Truman dropped the bomb to avoid an already planned invasion of the Japanese home islands that would have brought an estimated 1 Million+ U.S. casualties, and even more Japanese casualties. Yet, despite the obvious historic justification for the dropping of the bomb, President Obama...

Sixty-five years after dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and killing more than 140,000 people, the United States will send its first ever delegation to a ceremony commemorating the attack. On Friday, U.S. Ambassador John Roos will join representatives from 75 countries at the Hiroshima event, but he is not expected to speak. World War II allies France and Britain will also send delegations to the ceremony for the first time.

EXCLUSIVE:  The son of the U.S. Air Force pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare says the Obama administration's decision to send a U.S. delegation to a ceremony in Japan to mark the 65th anniversary of the attack on Hiroshima is an "unsaid apology" and appears to be an attempt to "rewrite history." James Tibbets, son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., says Friday's visit to Hiroshima by U.S. Ambassador John Roos is an act of contrition that his late father would never have approved. "It's an unsaid apology," Tibbets, 66, told FoxNews.com...

When it comes to nuclear weapons, oldies are goodies. Take, for example, the American B61 nuclear device. About the same shape as a 1,000 pound (455 kg) bomb, many NATO fighter bombers were equipped (with the electronics) to use this bomb during the Cold War (and many can still do so). Some 3,200 B61s were built since it entered service in the late 1960s, and about a third of those remain available for use. Some are to be refurbished, but politicians are still debating doing this just to keep B61s good for another two decades. Without the refurb, all these...

PAKISTAN, citing a 'clear and present danger' from its nuclear-armed rival India, ruled out on Monday global negotiations to ban the future production of material to make atomic bombs. Confirming a Reuters report from Jan 22, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Zamir Akram, said such a treaty would leave Pakistan - the most recent member of the nuclear club - at a permanent disadvantage. Pakistan's stance, triggered by nuclear and arms deals between India and the United States as well as with other nuclear powers, is a blow to the Obama administration's efforts to revive global disarmament....

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognised as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of World War II, has died at the age of 93. Mr Yamaguchi, known as 'Lucky', was in Hiroshima on a business trip for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on August 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body as well as temporary blindness and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, about 190 miles to the southwest, which suffered a...

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vitaly Ginzburg, a Russian physicist who survived Stalin's purges by working on the Soviet atomic bomb project and later won the Nobel Prize for physics, died in Moscow late on Sunday after a long illness. He was 93. Ginzburg won the 2003 Nobel physics prize for developing the theory behind superconductors, materials which allow electricity to pass without resistance at very low temperatures. He shared the prize with British-American Anthony Leggett and Russian-born U.S. scientist Alexei Abrikosov. But Ginzburg's career as a Soviet scientist almost ended when he took as his second wife a woman arrested in...

...This is the same administration that cut of aid to Honduras because it booted a president who was breaking its constitution and trying to enslave it citizenry. So while the tyrants in Iran are continuing to develop an atomic bomb, and are threatening more attacks on their own people, the Iranian protesters have no hope. You see the United States foreign policy is totally void of a moral fiber...that is the change Obama made.

A speech and a Nobel prize have raised hopes in Japan that Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the two cities leveled by atom bombs in World War II. But the issue is seen as a political minefield, and U.S. officials say it is unlikely Obama will visit either city during a two-day stop in Tokyo next month. Yesterday, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki went to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to formally invite Obama to their cities before a U.N. review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May. Sunao Tsuboi,...

Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joke about Iran's nuclear capability and the atomic bomb at their meeting in Tehran on Saturday. The man in the middle is laughing, but he dosen't know why. Edisto Joe

The Obama administration reportedly knew about the second secret Iranian uranium enrichment program prior to the United Nations meeting, yet the president chose to say nothing about the revelation, either during his address to the General Assembly or yesterday, when he chaired a Security Council session. Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama has maintained his determination to engage in direct negotiations with Iran over the Iranian nuclear program. A meeting between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia – plus Germany is scheduled for Oct. 1 in Geneva....

Note: Includes a video. Special Dispatch - No. 2479 August 10, 2009 Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Qadhafi: Libya Was on the Brink of Producing a Nuclear Bomb Following are excerpts from a public address delivered by Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi, which aired on Al-Sa'a TV on July 15, 2009: To view this clip on MEMRITV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2185.htm .

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb by the United States on Japan, August 6, 1945. The decision by President Harry Truman to drop the bomb has been roundly criticized by revisionist historians and others on the Left. Some have even gone so far as to call Truman a "war criminal" for doing so. They could not be more wrong. The United States had already suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties at the hands of Japan, in a war Japan started. The Japanese had shown in battle after battle their willingness to fight to...

SNIPPET: "BERLIN - Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency believes Iran is capable of producing and testing an atomic bomb within six months, much sooner than most analysts estimate, according to a report in German weekly Stern. The report, which quotes BND experts, says the agency has information supporting the view that Iran has mastered the enrichment technology necessary to make a bomb and has enough centrifuges to make weaponised uranium. “If they wanted to, they could detonate an atomic bomb in half a year’s time,” the story quoted a BND expert as saying. The BND did not return two calls...

It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse. Stewart repeats the charge...

TOKYO—A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II, officials said Tuesday. Tsutomu Yamaguchi had already been a certified "hibakusha," or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well, city officials said. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent...

Remember where you where the day the world slipped toward TEOTWAWKI. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f367aada-fec8-11dd-b19a-000077b07658.html

In 1945, after the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities, J. Robert Oppenheimer expressed foreboding about the spread of nuclear arms. “They are not too hard to make,” he told his colleagues on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M. “They will be universal if people wish to make them universal.” That sensibility, born where the atomic bomb itself was born, grew into a theory of technological inevitability. Because the laws of physics are universal, the theory went, it was just a matter of time before other bright minds and determined states joined the club. A corollary was that trying...

On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its...

Annual event near Y-12 features protest, praise of nukes - OAK RIDGE - At the minute Wednesday that an atomic bomb was dropped 63 years ago, Ralph Hutchison suddenly stopped reading somber reflections on that historic instant when the world forever changed.During the moment of silence that followed, a woman in favor of nuclear weapons could be heard in the background, defiantly singing "Onward Christian Soldiers." Such is the study in contrasts typical for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance's annual commemoration of Hiroshima Day.In front of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, alliance members protested the production of nuclear weapons,...

Hiroshima Day remembrance. In California, Moonbats will be ragging on America again for defeating Japanese fascism. Corner of Seal Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. Sunday, August 3, 2008. Counters are needed. From 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

TOKYO — North Korea took a step on Thursday toward reintegration into the world community and rapprochement with the United States by submitting for outside inspection a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear program. The 60-page declaration from North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished nations, was expected to describe in previously undisclosed detail its capabilities in nuclear power and nuclear weapons — meeting a major demand of the United States and other countries that consider the North a dangerous source of instability. “This can be a moment of opportunity for North Korea,” said President Bush, announcing the...

Retired Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, Jr., who piloted the aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb used in war, died last week at the age of 92. The life story of Tibbets, Jr. ends with a bit of what I consider a tragedy that should never again befall an American hero. When somebody says "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" these days, they could be referring to Michael Moore and Dennis Kucinich, but 60 years ago, devices sporting those seemingly innocuous monikers caused historically unmatched destruction, and ended a long war. There are many who believe this makes the...

When I was a child, my mother had one of the early coffee table books on display in the living room. “The Family of Man” (http://www.amazon.com/Family-Man-Greatest-Photographic-Exhibition/dp/B000J1AMR6/ref=sr_1_1/103-5108515-2439061?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193940207&sr=1-1) was, to a kid in grade school in the mid-50s, a fascinating book. There was little TV in those days, few magazines for kids, and of course, no video games, computers, or cell phones. This book’s 500 or so black and white pictures, taken from many magazines, showed a vast array of people from many nations engaged in a wide variety of activities. I spent hours and hours staring at the pictures, fascinated. I...

Paul Tibbets Jr., who flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb — on Hiroshima, Japan — died this morning at his East Side home. He was 92. Tibbets had suffered small strokes and heart failure in his final years and had been in hospice care. He was born in Quincy, Ill., but grew up in Miami after his father moved the family there. See link for complete story. Tibbets fell in love with flight and, at age 12, volunteered as a backseat assistant to a biplane pilot, dropping leaflets for the Curtiss Candy Co. at fairs, carnivals and...

There were fins all around, the killer sharks just circling, waiting, assessing their prey in their usual silent, sinister way. For the men strung out in the oil-streaked water, clinging to the sides of flimsy rafts or floating in sodden life-jackets, the sight was terrifying and the underwater brush of leathery skin against a submerged leg, or the nudge of a snout, was gut-wrenching. These men were already survivors, the remaining 900 sailors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Just three-quarters of the crew had managed to get off the heavy cruiser when she was blown apart by torpedoes from a Japanese...

1945 : United States conducts first test of the atomic bomb The United States conducts the first test of the atomic bomb at its research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The terrifying new weapon would quickly become a focal point in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The official U.S. development of the atomic bomb began with the establishment of the Manhattan Project in August 1942. The project brought together scientists from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to study the feasibility of building an atomic bomb capable of unimaginable destructive power. The...

TOKYO — Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday. "I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo. Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb survivors. "The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, director-general of a group of...

June 19, 1953 : Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a...

Iran four years from atomic bomb, say experts By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent Last Updated: 3:35am BST 24/04/2007 Iran's nuclear programme is facing such severe technical difficulties that it could take four years to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb and eight years to deploy an operational nuclear weapon, experts say. Students hold placards supporting Iran's nuclear right President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement on April 9 that uranium enrichment on an "industrial scale" had begun was "misleading" and the time-scale for success is likely to be longer than early estimates suggested. "It's very difficult to enrich uranium," said Norman Dombey,...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

There's a certain irony, and even dark humor, in the current hysteria in Washington over the possibility that in the near future, relatively weak and distant Iran might have the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons. After all, Iran is a country that has hardly had imperial ambitions since the days of ancient Persia. Furthermore, to Iran's east, the unstable and second largest Muslim country in the world, Pakistan, already has nuclear weapons in great supply, as does that bellicose and expansionist little ethnic-supremacist European transplant two country's to the west, Israel. In the existing situation in the region, the prospective...

<p>The New York Times article to be published on November 3rd 2006 is about the US putting some captured Iraqi documents on the Foreign Military Intelligence Office (FMSO) website that talks about what the NYT and the IAEA call sensitive information from Iraq 1996 "Full, Final, and Complete Declaration FFCD presented to the UN and IAEA in 1996 and that talks about Iraq nuclear clandestine program. The IAEA and the New York Times claim that Iran may be using some of the technology in this FFCD which is a laughable idea as shown below.</p>

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2006 -- New U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to its claim of a recent nuclear weapons test “says that we are united in our determination to see to it that the Korean peninsula is nuclear weapons free,” President Bush said at the White House after the sanctions were announced yesterday. Earlier, the Security Council had voted unanimously to impose several sanctions on North Korea, calling its claimed nuclear test “a clear threat to international peace and security.” North Korea announced it had successfully exploded a nuclear weapon during an Oct. 9 test. Nuclear...

North Korea warned on Wednesday that increased U.S. pressure over the regime's reported nuclear test could be considered an act of war, and South Korea suggested it would build up its conventional arsenal to deal with its belligerent neighbor. North Korea's No. 2 leader threatened to conduct more nuclear tests if the United States continued what he called its "hostile attitude." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would not attack North Korea, rejecting a suggestion that Pyongyang may feel it needs nuclear weapons to stave off an Iraq-style U.S. invasion. In its first formal statement since the...

Selected for the 2004 National Film Registry of "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" motion pictures. Famous Civil Defense film for children in which Bert the Turtle shows what to do in case of atomic attack. Producer: Archer Productions, Inc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K_LZDXp0I

1945: US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima The first atomic bomb has been dropped by a United States aircraft on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. President Harry S Truman, announcing the news from the cruiser, Augusta, in the mid-Atlantic, said the device contained the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT and was more than 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date. An accurate assessment of the damage caused has so far been impossible due to a huge cloud of impenetrable dust covering the target. Hiroshima is one of the chief supply depots for the Japanese army....

most things about North Korea, little is known for certain about the Taepodong 2 missile. But there is no doubt North Korea does have a very long standing and pretty sophisticated missile programme. North Korea's intentions are under the global spotlight In 1998, before it began observing a moratorium on tests, North Korea launched a Taepodong 1 missile which passed over northern Japan and surprised Western intelligence agencies by the use of three stages in the missile's propulsion system. What is striking about the Taepodong 2 is that it could well be North Korea's first genuine intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)...

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea will respond to a pre-emptive U.S. military attack with an "annihilating strike and a nuclear war," the state-run media said Monday, heightening its antagonistic rhetoric. The Korean Central News Agency, citing an unidentified Rodong Sinmun newspaper "analyst," accused the United States of increasing military pressure on the isolated communist state. The North Korean threat of retaliation, which is often voiced by its state-controlled media, comes amid U.S. official reports that Pyongyang has shown signs of preparing for a test of a long-range missile. "The army and people of the DPRK are now in full...

Attention MS President. We have placed nuclear suitcase bombs and dirty bombs in five major US cities. We will not detonate these bombs under the following conditions: 1) The US must not interfere with Iran's treatment of Israel 2) All Jews must leave Israel and all facilities must be turned over to us intact. 3) The US must withdraw from Iraq within 60 days. If these conditions are not met, we will detonate one bomb. If Israel or the US uses nuclear or conventional weapons against us, we will detonate all bombs. Checkmate. It wasn't a light bulb that went...

Botched CIA operations may have handed Iran vital information on how to make nuclear weapons and betrayed the identities of America's spies in the country, according to a new book on US intelligence. The latest account of American intelligence failures includes details of how the CIA allegedly tried to slip Teheran some Russian designs for an atomic bomb, which contained hidden flaws that would have made any device inoperable. The Iranians, however, were tipped off by the very agent sent to give them the documents. In a separate incident, the book claims a CIA officer mistakenly sent an Iranian agent...

Those of us who enjoy military history usually just switch on the History Channel for our daily fix of guts, gore and armed conflict. But if you’re a serious war buff, and you want to relive one of the most horrifying moments in the deadliest war in human history, an Italian toy maker has just the thing. Brumm recently unveiled miniature models of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” Those names may conjure up images of cuddly cartoon characters, but they’re actually the codenames for two atomic bombs that the U.S. military dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final days...

See for example this thread first. El Baradei from the U.N. Says we should call Iran a frien' This means that Islam Would get its own BOMB A question of "Not if, but WHEN"

As the century's greatest thinker, as an immigrant who fled from oppression to freedom, as a political idealist, he best embodies what historians will regard as significant about the 20th century. And as a philosopher with faith both in science and in the beauty of God's handiwork, he personifies the legacy that has been bequeathed to the next century. In a hundred years, as we turn to another new century--nay, ten times a hundred years, when we turn to another new millennium--the name that will prove most enduring from our own amazing era will be that of Albert Einstein: genius,...

LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. (AP) - Air Force Lt. Col. Daniel A. McGovern, a combat photographer who filmed the aftermath of the atomic bomb detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, has died. He was 96. McGovern died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Laguna Woods. Weeks after the bombs were dropped in August 1945, McGovern began taking photographs that have since appeared in history books, newspapers, television shows and movies. Earlier during the war, McGovern photographed President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House. In 1943, McGovern flew missions as a cameraman while stationed in Chelveston, England. He survived two...