Tsar Bomba

Maybe she's swum the Dardanelles.

1961, the Tsar Bomba

detonated.

The Soviet Union tested the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created at 50 to 58 megatons over Novaya Zemla.

On this day in 1961, the most powerful weapon of any kind was detonated on the Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.

It was later called Tsar Bomba, and it was a thermonuclear aerial bomb designed to detonate above the target, which it did on this day 13,000 feet above the ground after being dropped by parachute.

The bomb yielded the equivalent of 50 megatons of TNT, the most powerful human-made explosion in history.

The project was the idea of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and work on the project started in July of 61.

Andrei Sakharov oversaw the team of designers that produced this one prototype that could conceivably deliver a 100-megaton blast.

It was later determined that the Tsar Bomba was too big and too heavy, though, to be of any operational use.

But in reality, the Soviets, who had trailed the U.S. in nuclear proliferation, built it as a statement that they could build a bomb with this much power, despite its impracticality.

It was part of what eventually led to the signing of the 1963 treaty banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater.

Yeah, he sold his first frozen peas.

1961, the Soviet Union detonated Tsar Bomba.

It was a 58 megaton hydrogen bomb.

It's still the most powerful nuclear bomb ever.

The broadcast panicked some listeners in its portrayal of an invasion by Martians.

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the Tsar Bomba, with a force estimated at about 50 megatons, over 3,500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It remains the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.

In 1972, an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train was struck by another train on Chicago's south side, killing 45 people and injuring about 350.

1938, the radio play The War of the Worlds, starring Orson Welles, aired on the CBS radio network.

1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the Tsar Bomba, with a force estimated at about 50 megatons, over 3,500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In 1972, 45 people were killed when an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train was struck from behind by another train on Chicago's south side.

This day in 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a scheduled 15-round bout known as the Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Congo, then Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title.

know in 1961...

No. ...the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb called the Tsar Bomba? Tsar Bomba.

With a force estimated at about 50 megatons, which is over 3,500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Was it a successful test? Yeah.

It was designed to be used against masses of tanks and it would be lethal within about a quarter mile, almost exclusively due to the radiation which would kill the tank crews.

At the other end of the scale for large devices, there's the Tsar Bomba.

In that case, the thermal radiation is the dominant effect.

It'll start fires far beyond the point when the blast wave is destructive.

The broadcast panicked some listeners in its portrayal of an invasion by Martians.

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the Tsar Bomba, with a force estimated at about 50 megatons, over 3,500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima.

It remains the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.

In 1972, an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train was struck by another train on Chicago's south side, killing 45 people and injuring about 350.

Anyway, that's what happened.

Today in 1961, the Soviets detonated Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya.

It was an island in the Arctic Ocean.

The largest nuclear weapon ever set off produced the most powerful human-made explosion ever recorded.