During the 1960s, a decade synonymous with free love, hippies and “peace man,” America was also at the pretty dramatic and bomb ridden business end of the Cold War.
Both the United States and Soviet USSR were testing their atomic warheads left, right and center, but the USA wanted to take it up a notch.
On July 9, 1962, USA conducted Starfish Prime, one of five high-altitude nuclear tests that shot a 1.4 megatons warhead 250 miles above Earth’s atmosphere, where it exploded.
Aurora’s were seen almost 900 miles and electromagnetic pulses damaged and shut down phone lines in the Hawaiian Islands!
Photo: Compeletely inert practice Genie round (ATR-2N) on MF-9 trailer by wbaiv licensed under Creative commons 5
