On July 16, 1945, the United States Army detonated the world’s first nuclear weapon in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert. The test, code-named “Trinity,” was a success, unleashing an explosion with the energy of about 20 kilotons of TNT and beginning the nuclear age. Since then, nearly 2,000 nuclear tests have been performed. Most of these took place during the 1960s and 1970s. When the technology was new, tests were frequent and often spectacular, and they led to the development of newer, more deadly weapons. Since the 1990s, there have been efforts to limit the testing of nuclear weapons,...
