Melissa - Timeline

Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays

Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the radioactive elements radium and polonium.

Albert Einstein developed the formula E=mc^2

Georg von Hevesy conceived the idea of using radioactive tracers.

Two German scientists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, demonstrated nuclear fission.

Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Roosevelt informing him of German atomic research and the potential for a bomb.

President Truman orders the Atomic Energy Commission to develop the hydrogen bomb (H-bomb).

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 was passed to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

The United States set off the first underground nuclear test, code-named Rainier, in a mountain tunnel in the remote desert 100 miles from Las Vegas

The Soviet Union unexpectedly exploded the largest nuclear device in history, equal to 57 million tons of TNT.

The United States and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting underwater, atmospheric, and outer space nuclear tests.

The United States canceled the development of the neutron bomb.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Powerplant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania suffers a partial core meltdown.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is signed.

Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor meltdown and fire occur in the Soviet Union.