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On July 16, U.S. military researchers conduct the world’s first atomic weapons test in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a culmination of the top-secret Manhattan Project. -
The Soviet Union explodes its first nuclear weapon at a test range in Kazakhstan Most U.S. intelligence assessments at the time had estimated that Moscow was at least three years away from obtaining such technology . -
the United States and Soviet Union race to develop the next class of weapons, known as thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bombs. In late 1952, U.S scientists detonate the first of these weapons at an atoll in the Marshall Islands, an explosion hundreds of times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. -
is established in Vienna as a forum for international cooperation on civilian nuclear research. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower first called for the creation of a such an agency in his Atoms for Peace speech to the UN General Assembly in 1953.
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The Soviet Union conducts the world’s first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), seen as capable of striking U.S. territory, in October 1957.
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The year 1958 proves to be the most active to date for nuclear testing, with the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States detonating more than one hundred devices in total.
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Cold War tensions nearly spill over into a nuclear conflict when, in October, U.S. reconnaissance flights reveal the Soviets constructing secret missile bases in Cuba
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the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agree to ban nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water, and to significantly restrict underground testing.
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The pursuit of nuclear weapons by more states leads to calls for an international framework to halt proliferation. Discussions on a treaty began at the United Nations in 1959. After multiple drafts, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States sign the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on July 1, 1968, agreeing to pursue general disarmament. China and France do not join until 1992.
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The late 1960s and early 1970s see a general thawing of U.S.-Soviet relations, ushering in a hopeful era of nuclear arms control, which becomes most apparent in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT.
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the United States and Soviet Union sign a SALT II agreement that would have placed further limits on their nuclear weapons and launch platforms, including strategic bombers, and imposed certain notification requirements and new testing bans.
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the Ronald Reagan administration focuses on modernizing the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal and accelerating a general military buildup. However, in November, President Reagan presents the Soviet Union with a so-called zero option, in which all Soviet and U.S.