The 1950s were an interesting time.
Or, to put it another way, it was a terrifying time to be alive.
The world lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation.
War raged in Korea.
And human incompetence ensured that people died unnecessarily.
Some crazy ideas surfaced during this strange decade.
Both the United States and Soviet governments thought nothing of frequently detonating nuclear
weapons.
The long standing tradition of race riots continued, although society was slowly starting
to change.
And in the background of this insanity natural disasters ravaged parts of the United States.
Today we are going to look at some of the more disturbing events from 1951.
If you have not seen our previous episode about 1950, you might want to check it out.
Nevada Proving Grounds
The United States government started producing nuclear weapons in 1945.
By 1951, it needed a way to test these destructive weapons.
The Nevada desert was the perfect place.
Or so they thought.
On January 11, 1951 the Nevada Proving Grounds were established for testing nuclear weapons.
It covered 1,360 square miles of mountain and desert.
The test site was only 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
On January 27, the first nuclear test took place at the Proving Grounds.
It was a 1 kiloton bomb which detonated with a large mushroom cloud.
Nuclear detonations would continue at the site until 1992.
Over one thousand nuclear weapons were detonated at the Proving Grounds.
Most were underground, but at least 100 were above ground.
The last nuclear device to explode in the atmosphere was on July 17, 1962.
Most of the time, the weapons were tested to determine their yield.
Sometimes structures were placed nearby to help researchers understand how nuclear explosions
affected them.
On a few occasions, the military had even stranger ideas about how to use nuclear bombs.
Operation Plowshare tried to prove that nuclear weapons could be used for peaceful purposes,
such as for building bays or canals.
They tried to demonstrate this on July 6, 1962 by detonating a 102 kiloton bomb.
The explosion resulted in a crater that is 1,280 feet wide and 320 feet deep.
The crater became a tourist attraction, although nobody was convinced that using nuclear explosions
for construction projects was advisable.
During the 1950s, the mushroom clouds from the explosions could be seen almost 100 miles
away.
Hotels in Las Vegas faced the direction of the Proving Grounds, and allowed tourists
to watch from their rooms.
After atmospheric testing stopped in the 1960s, underground testing was used.
Nuclear weapons would be detonated from within a hole that was almost a mile deep.
The explosions vaporized rock creating a large chamber which was then filled with radioactive
material.
Was detonating over one thousand nuclear weapons bad for the environment?
Most definitely.
The underground tests tended to happen near aquifers or below the water table.
Over time, it contaminated the water supply.
As far as radiation in water, the federal standard says anything above 20 picocuries
is too dangerous.
Below the Proving Ground, some of the water reaches millions of picocuries per liter.
As far as the above ground testing, radioactive materials did blow into populated areas of
Utah and Nevada.
There is some controversy as to whether it actually increased cancer rates.
By controversy, I mean that most normal people think nuclear fallout killed civilians and
the government claims otherwise.
If you want to go visit the Proving Grounds, it might be a good idea to wait a few thousand
years.
Woodbridge Train Derailment
Around 5 pm on February 6, Pennsylvania Railroad Train number 733 left it’s station in Jersey
City.
The train was heading north.
It was also crowded due to a nearby strike.
There were over 1,000 passengers spread between 11 cars.
The route the train was going to travel had a slight detour.
Workers were building the New Jersey Turnpike.
Because of this, the track diverted to a wooden trestle.
A notice had gone out to engineers a month before warning about this.
It also said that when trains approached this temporary structure they would need to slow
to 25 miles per hour.
Normally trains on this route traveled at 60 miles per hour.
Joseph Fitzsimmons was the engineer on train 733.
Before it left the station, the conductor reminded Joseph of the speed restriction.
Apparently Joseph wasn’t a good listener.
He didn’t bother slowing down at all.
The conductor realized what was happening about a mile before approaching the wooden
trestle.
He tried to pull the emergency cord, but the passengers were packed so tight he couldn’t
reach it.
When the train hit the curve at 5:43pm, eight of the eleven cars derailed.
The first two cars fell on their sides.
The third and fourth cars crashed into each other as they fell down a 26 foot incline.
Eighty-five people lost their lives in the accident.
Most were in the cars that fell.
Joseph Fitzsimmons, when questioned, claimed he was only going 25 miles per hour.
An inquiry concluded he was doing closer to 60.
He was not put on trial, nor did he lose his job.
At least Joseph never operated a train again.
Julius And Ethel Rosenberg
At the end of World War Two in 1945.
the United States was the only nation with the ability to build and deploy nuclear weapons.
(In my opinion, this is one too many.)
The United States government, and the rest of the world, were shocked when the Soviet
Union tested their own nuclear device on August 29, 1949.
Although the Soviet Union had capable engineers, they also had a little help.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a Jewish couple from New York City.
Julius was born on May 12, 1918 and Ethel was born on September 28, 1915.
Although both had Jewish immigrants as parents, they were born as US citizens.
The husband and wife were also communists.
And their political beliefs inspired them to act.
Julius Rosenberg joined the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratory in 1940.
He worked as an engineer-inspector until being fired in 1945.
The Army terminated his employment once they found out he was a communist.
Being a communist in America in the 1950s was not a good idea.
Neither was being a spy.
Although nobody knew it at the time, Julius made contact with a Soviet spy handler.
He began selling secrets sometime in 1942.
Those secrets included plans for fighter jets, communications equipment, radar, and guided
missiles.
Julius also managed to recruit an engineer who worked on designs for the plant that made
the first nuclear bombs.
That is why the Soviets were able to perform their first nuclear test in 1949.
The FBI was able to catch one member of the spy ring and from there it unraveled.
Eventually there was a connection to Julius.
Julius Rosenberg was arrested on July 17, 1950.
Ethel was arrested on August 11.
The trial for both of them started on March 6, 1951.
On March 21 they were convicted of espionage.
The judge, Irving Kaufman, even blamed them for American deaths in Korea when issuing
his decision.
Their sentence was death.
After being sentenced, a worldwide campaign for clemency began.
Some Americans thought the Rosenbergs were innocent.
Various people in European countries supported them also.
Mostly, they begged the US government to not execute Ethel.
President Eisenhower ignored all of them.
And popular opinion within the United States was with him.
On June 19, they were executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York with the electric chair.
Julius went quickly, dying after the first shock.
Ethel, though, had a more difficult time.
She was given three shocks, but then doctors found her heart was still beating.
They gave her two more and that did the trick.
Witnesses claimed her head was smoking.
Ethel and Julius had two sons who were orphaned upon their deaths.
Nobody in the family would take them in.
In 2001, they tried to change public opinion.
They argued that Julius was guilty of conspiracy, but didn’t deserve death.
And Ethel was innocent.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, records in their archives concerning the Rosenbergs became
public.
Some of those records, supposedly, showed that Ethel knew exactly what Julius was doing.
Whether or not they deserved it, (They did.)
the Rosenbergs were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage during
the Cold War.
Operation Greenhouse
Once the United States began testing nuclear weapons, it had problems stopping.
In addition to the Nevada Proving Ground, the government needed a place on the ocean.
After all, the Navy might need to use nuclear weapons.
So what better place for them to learn?
This led to the creation of the Pacific Proving Ground.
The area reserved for it was the Enewetak Atoll, which is near the Marshall Islands.
The United States government was very unhappy about the Soviet Union developing nuclear
weapons.
So Operation Greenhouse used the Pacific Proving Ground to test thermonuclear weapons.
These next generation weapons were smaller and more efficient, and generated far more
destructive force than the weapons tested in Nevada.
They built bunkers, houses, and factories to test these new weapons.
And then they detonated numerous thermonuclear bombs which destroyed everything in their
path.
Predictably, the area around the atoll is very radioactive.
A concrete dome was built to contain the most dangerous material.
But it has been deteriorating and there are concerns a tsunami could wash it away soon.
Policy makers during the Cold War didn’t seem to think very far ahead, did they?
Johnny Bright Incident
It would, of course, be impossible to discuss events in the 1950s without covering at least
one instance of racial violence.
Johnny Bright was an African-American born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on June 11, 1930.
When he graduated high school in 1947, Johnny went to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
He tried out for the football team, and did very well.
At the beginning of his senior year, he led the nation in both rushing and total offense.
Of course, the fact he wasn’t white became a problem for players on the opposing team.
On October 20, 1951 Drake University was scheduled to play against Oklahoma A&M.
It was an open secret that Oklahoma intended to hurt Drake repeatedly, because his skin
was the wrong color.
During the first seven minutes of the game, Bright was knocked unconscious three times.
The final blow was an elbow that broke his jaw.
Eventually the injuries forced Johnny to leave the game.
A photographer was taking pictures as the jaw breaking blow hit Johnny.
These images clearly showed the hit happened after the ball was passed, which meant it
was technically against the rules.
Even though the rules were obviously broken, neither Oklahoma A&M nor the ruling body for
college football took any action.
Despite being ignored at the time, the Johnny Bright Incident wasn’t forgotten.
Eventually the NCAA was forced to create new rules about illegal blocking, and mandated
the use of helmets.
Johnny became a Canadian citizen in 1962.
He died of a massive heart attack in 1983, while undergoing elective surgery to fix a
knee problem caused by his football injuries.
There is almost no end to the chaos of 1951.
The Great Flood Of 1951 caused over nine billion dollars of damage to Kansas and Missouri.
There was also a race riot in Chicago.
The list goes on and on.
But we have to stop somewhere.
Given how many nuclear weapons were detonated in the 1950s, it’s truly amazing humanity
has survived the past 70 years.
Perhaps the mutant uprising is yet to come.
After all, the radioactive isotopes might wash into the ocean at any time.
What do you think about the year 1951?
Was it a great time to be alive, or are you glad you missed it?
If you want to learn more about this troubling decade, then please like and subscribe.
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Thank you for watching Bad Things In History.