1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

• First meeting of the Family Committee, chaired by Edward Teller to develop the first two thermonuclear devices.
• Los Alamos citizens first vote in state primary election.
• First group of Los Alamos County officials elected.

• Nevada Proving Ground established 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada.
• “Able” is the first nuclear test at Nevada Proving Ground.
• US hydrogen bomb designed by Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller.
• Operation Greenhouse: “George” is the first thermonuclear (or proof of principle) test.
• Operation Greenhouse: “Item” is the first thermonuclear “boosted” test.
• Hill Movie Theater opens (now the site of C. B. Fox department store).

• MANIAC electronic computer operational at Los Alamos.
• Lawrence Livermore Laboratory established in California.
• Operation Ivy: “Mike,” at Eniwetok, is first US hydrogen bomb test.
• Nevada Proving Ground renamed Nevada Test Site (NTS).
• Formal dedication of Los Alamos Medical Center.
• Los Alamos residents evacuate in first civil defense test.

• Laboratory moves from original site near Ashley Pond to South Mesa.
• Norris Bradbury announces Los Alamos role in the development of thermonuclear weapons.

• Oppenheimer clearance hearings held.
• Forest fire rages near Los Alamos.
• Security switchboard for home telephones removed.

• Rover nuclear reactor rocket program launched.
• Los Alamos has 130 clubs and organizations, 42 individual businesses, 100 home-operated businesses, and 15 churches.
• Harold Agnew chosen as first state senator from Los Alamos.
• Los Alamos opens to the news media for the first time.

• Existence of the neutrino proved by Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan.

• First US underground nuclear test.
• “Hood” is the largest atmospheric test ever conducted at NTS (74 kilotons).
• Security gates come down at Los Alamos, previously a “closed city.”

• Curfew law for minors becomes effective.
• Sixty representatives from Los Alamos attend United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva, Switzerland.

King Baudouin in Los Alamos

• Nonproliferation efforts begin.
• King Baudouin of Belgium visits Los Alamos.

• President Truman orders the AEC to develop the hydrogen bomb.
• John Von Neumann and a team of meteorologists using ENIAC make the first computerized 24-hour weather predictions.
• Commercial color television begins.
• North Korea invades South Korea.
• Sen. Joseph McCarthy begins his crusade against communists.

• Aage Bohr and Ben Mottelson demonstrate that the nucleus is not necessarily spherical.
• John Mauchly and John Eckert build first commercially available computer, UNIVAC1.
• Walter Zinn develops an experimental breeder reactor near Idaho Falls.
• General MacArthur is dismissed by President Truman.

President Eisenhower

• United Kingdom (UK) detonates its first nuclear device.
• The first accident at a nuclear reactor occurs at Chalk River, Canada where the nuclear core explodes.
• Sony develops the pocket-sized transistor radio.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower elected President of the United States.

• Soviet Leader Josef Stalin dies.
• Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev becomes first secretary of the Communist Party.
• Armistice is signed, ending the war in Korea.
• USSR successfully tests nuclear device, demonstrating their first use of fusion.
• President Eisenhower announces his Atoms for Peace proposal.
• James Watson and Francis Crick develop the double-helix model for DNA.

• China establishes atomic weapons program.
• The Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire founded.
• The USS Nautilus, the first atomic-powered ship, is launched.
• Aikichi Kaboyama, a Japanese fisher, is killed b fallout from a U.S. thermonuclear test in the Pacific.
• Siege of Dien Bien Phu; French withdraw from Vietnam.
• Brown v. Board of Education (U.S. Supreme Court orders school desegregation.)

• First United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva, Switzerland.
• Soviets test their first hydrogen bomb.
• Owen Chamberlain and Emilio Segre produce antiprotons.
• Jonas Salk creates vaccine for polio.
• Gregory Pincus develops a successful birth control pill.
• Juan Peron is deposed in Argentina.
• Merger of AFL and CIO forms largest labor organization in the US.

• Choh Hao Li isolates human growth hormone.
• US explodes its largest hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
• Fidel Castro leads guerilla forces against Fulgencio Batista.
• Hungarians revolt against communism.

• The “Space Age” begins with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik.
• UK explodes its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple.
• International Atomic Energy Agency established in Vienna, Austria.
• Alick Isaacs and Jean Lindenmann discover interferons.
• Ghana becomes first sub-Saharan country to become independent.

• President Eisenhower declares a moratorium on all US nuclear testing.
• USSR stops nuclear testing.
• James Van Allen's counter discovers the Van Allen radiation belt that surrounds Earth.
• U.S. opens first experimental reactor generating electric power at Shippingport, Pennsylvania
• Werner Von Braun's team launches first U.S. satellite to orbit the earth.
• E.O. Lawrence dies.
• China announces its "Great Leap Forward."

• Plutonium-238 used as a power source in space.
• Soviet Union launches space probes Lunik I, II and III.
• Louis Leakey discovers early hominid.
• Grace Hopper invents the computer language COBOL.
• The First commercial Xerox copier is introduced.
• Batista regime is overthrown by forces led by Fidel Castro in Cuba.