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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Project 596 (Miss Qiu, Chinese: 邱小姐; pinyin: Qiū Xiǎojiě, as the callsign; Chic-1 by the US intelligence agencies) was the first nuclear test of the nuclear weapons program of China, detonated on 16 October 1964, at the Lop Nur test site in Xinjiang. It was an implosion fission device containing about 15 kg weapons-grade uranium (U-235), produced at the Lanzhou enrichment plant. It had a yield of 22 kilotons, comparable to the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb RDS-1 in 1949 and the American Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Key figures in the device's design included Deng Jiaxian, Qian Sanqiang, and Peng Huanwu. With the test, China became the world's fifth nuclear-armed state. This was the first of 45 successful nuclear tests China conducted between 1964 and 1996, all of which occurred at the Lop Nur test site. The atomic bomb is now honored under China's "Two Bombs, One Satellite". Premier Zhou Enlai announced the test the same day, during which he criticized US "nuclear blackmail" and the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as imposing a "nuclear monopoly". A key moment in the history of the People's Republic, the test influenced the ultimate UN recognition of the mainland seven years later, and China's advance towards a superpower. US leadership had previously decided against military strikes on nuclear facilities in China; following the test its espionage against the program was enhanced. The test caused the government of Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek to pursue its own clandestine nuclear weapons until 1988. Relations with the Soviet Union, which had turned hostile since 1961, worsened after the test; tensions briefly approached nuclear war in 1969.
596L (CIA designation: CHIC-3) was the third nuclear weapon test conducted by the People's Republic of China. Detonated on May 9, 1966, at Lop Nur, it was the first Chinese test to use thermonuclear reactions in a layer cake design, and yielded 220 kilotons of TNT. As part of the Two Bombs, One Satellite project, it was conducted as a physics experiment to verify computational simulation for China's development of true (multi-stage) thermonuclear weapons.
639 (CIA designation: CHIC-6) was the codename for China's first full-scale test of a two-staged thermonuclear device, on 17 June 1967, yielding 3.3 megatons of TNT. The sixth nuclear test carried out by the People's Republic of China, it was parachuted from a Xi'an H-6 bomber over the Lop Nur Nuclear Test Base in Xinjiang, detonating at a height of 3 km. Chinese thermonuclear research began in 1961, during the early Sino-Soviet split and prior to the first Chinese nuclear test, 596, in 1964. Initial research by Peng Huanwu focused on a layer cake design test involving thermonuclear reactions; Chinese scientist had received limited information about the Soviet RDS-6s design. This was eventually tested as 596L in May 1966. Theoretical development concluded a separate design was necessary for multi-megaton yields that had already been demonstrated by the United States, by the Soviet Union, and by the United Kingdom. A computational effort led by Yu Min developed by November 1965 a two-stage bomb, resembling the Teller-Ulam design but officially named the Yu Min configuration. China's first multistage thermonuclear device, codenamed 629, used this design in December 1966 at a demonstration yield of 122 kilotons. The 639 device comprised a spherical primary, similar to the Project 596 device, and a spherical secondary with a shell of highly enriched uranium, produced in Lanzhou, and lithium deuteride, produced near Baotou. Unlike the US and USSR, at the time of their hydrogen bomb program, China operated no production facilities for plutonium or tritium. The thermonuclear program's rapid success allowed it to avoid major delay or collapse during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966. In the months before the tests, scientists were spurred to achieve a multi-megaton thermonuclear test ahead of France, which achieved this in August 1968; China became the fourth nation to develop thermonuclear weapons. Detonated 32 months after 596, it remains the fastest progression from nuclear to megaton thermonuclear test of any country.
Lanzhou uranium enrichment plant (Chinese official name: CNNC Lanzhou Uranium Enrichment Co., Ltd., weapon program codename: Plant 504) is the largest uranium enrichment facility in China. It currently produces low-enriched uranium (LEU) for China's fleet of civilian nuclear reactors. It was constructed from 1958 as part of China's nuclear weapons program, producing highly enriched uranium (HEU) for its first (Project 596) and subsequent nuclear tests. In 1958 construction began with Soviet assistance, based on the gaseous diffusion facility of the Ural Electrochemical Combine in Novouralsk. In 1960 Soviet advisors were recalled due to the Sino-Soviet split. Chinese researchers led by Wang Chengshu completed the theoretical design for the plant. Between 1963 and 1964, American U-2 spy planes took photographs of the site. Initially judged to be too small for HEU production, infrared sensing flights after the first nuclear test confirmed it as operational. In January 1964, the site produced its first highly enriched uranium, and by October 1964, it had produced at least the 15 kilograms used in the Project 596 implosion test. China used HEU as the fissile material for its first seven nuclear tests, and began plutonium usage in December 1968. It was China's only site for uranium enrichment until the startup of a similar gaseous diffusion plant at Jinkouhe, Leshan in 1970. HEU production ended in 1979, as China pivoted to civilian nuclear power. The gaseous diffusion plant produced LEU from 1980 until its shutdown in 2000. To meet increasing demand from new pressurized water reactors, more efficient gas centrifuge enrichment plants were constructed and operated at the Lanzhou site: CEP1 supplied by Russia in 1991, CEP2 in 2010, CEP3 in 2012, CEP4 in 2015, CEP5 in 2023, all domestically developed.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.