Gavin Edwards
gavindedwards.bsky.social
Gavin Edwards
@gavindedwards.bsky.social
Chemistry professor, Eastern Michigan University.
It's that time of year again.
December 21, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Today in 1959, “Time Enough At Last” (Season 1, Episode 8) of “The Twilight Zone” was broadcast for the first time on CBS. A catastrophic nuclear war finally allows obsessive bibliophile bank teller Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) to read as many books as he wants without interruption, until …
November 20, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Tonight in 1983, more than 100 million Americans saw multiple thermonuclear weapons destroy Kansas City, Missouri, in “The Day After” on ABC. A.C. Nielsen Company reported that 62 percent of television sets that night were tuned to the film. I watched in my packed college dorm lounge. How about you?
November 20, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
At this moment in 1952 (7:14:59 AM November 1, local time), the United States tested the first true (albeit undeliverable, weighing a massive 82 tons) hydrogen bomb at Enewetak Atoll. The 10.4-Megaton MIKE explosion vaporized Elugelab Island, leaving behind a crater 1.2 miles wide and 164 feet deep.
Ivy Mike Countdown and detonation
YouTube video by atomcentral
www.youtube.com
October 31, 2025 at 7:14 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
It's #NationalPumpkinDay! 🎃

Why are pumpkins orange, and what do pumpkins have to do with pumpkin spice? Here are the chemical answers in @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/articles/93/...

#ChemSky 🧪
October 26, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Well, I can see how that ended up on clearance.
October 25, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Tonight in 1962, as the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated toward direct confrontation, a sentry on patrol at Duluth Air Force Base in Minnesota thought he saw someone climbing the perimeter fence. He shot at the intruder and activated the base sabotage alarm, which by design automatically triggered ...
October 25, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
65 years ago today, the newly operational USAF Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) radar at Thule, Greenland, mistook the rising Moon for a huge Soviet nuclear attack—triggering a false alarm while Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was in New York City attending the UN General Assembly.
October 5, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
FACT OF THE DAY. 3 September 1939. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on BBC radio at 11:15 AM that Germany had not responded to the British ultimatum to remove its troops from Poland and so “this country is at war with Germany”.
September 3, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Today in 1983, a Soviet Su-15 interceptor shot down a Boeing 747 operating as Korean Air Lines Flight 007 en route from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, killing 269 passengers and crew, after it accidentally strayed into restricted airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island.
September 1, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Today in 1962—for the second time in two months and the fourth and final time since October 1961—a US Air Force Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile at Gioia del Colle Air Base in southeastern Italy was struck by lightning, partially activating its 1.4-Megaton W49 thermonuclear warhead.
August 31, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
At this instant 80 years ago (11:02 AM August 9, local time), “Fat Man”—a 21-kiloton implosion-type atomic bomb—exploded about 1,650 feet over Nagasaki, missing its intended aim point by 1.3 miles but still killing an estimated 70,000 men, women, and children and injuring some 60,000 more.
August 9, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
The astonishing thing about Watergate, in contrast to today, is how the President was actually shamed into leaving office.

Imagine that: shame.
August 8, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
#OTD 6 August 1945 the world forever changed with the atomic destruction of #Hiroshima. Today there are over 12,500 nuclear warheads, with 9000+ operational. The threat is always there. Every second of the day. Remember that as we talk about what happened 80 years ago.
August 6, 2025 at 5:49 AM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
A watch frozen forever at 8:15am, the moment an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima on Monday August 6th 1945.

#Hiroshima #August6th #HiroshimaPeaceMemorialMuseum #広島 #HiroshimaDay
August 6, 2025 at 12:13 AM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Today in 1939, Albert Einstein dictated a letter to FDR (drafted by physicist Leo Szilard) alerting him to new developments in atomic energy: “A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.”
August 2, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
the crew jettisoned two of the bombs, roughly 75 and 50 miles off the coast (they planned to jettison all three but ran out of time).

Despite an extensive and secret three-month search, neither atomic bomb was ever located or recovered. The Air Force did not publicly disclose their loss until 1977.
July 28, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Today in 1957, a C-124A Globemaster II ferrying 3 unarmed Mark-5 atomic bombs and 1 plutonium capsule from Dover AFB, Delaware, to a base in Europe, lost power in both its port-side engines off Cape May, New Jersey, and began losing altitude. To make a safe emergency landing near Atlantic City …
July 28, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
80 years ago this morning—at 5:29 AM (Mountain War Time)—about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, the nuclear age began with a big bang. Contrary to widespread assumptions, the area surrounding the remote Trinity test site was not uninhabited, and the fallout did not drift away harmlessly.
July 16, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
Indiana Jones will be played by a rotating cast of three adjuncts who answer to two different associate deans
July 2, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
FACT OF THE DAY. 10 May 1941. Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, parachuted into Scotland on what he claimed was a peace mission which had not been sanctioned by Hitler. He’d flown solo for 1,000 miles from Bavaria in a Messerschmitt Bf 110. He was arrested shortly after landing and imprisoned.
May 10, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
PERSON OF THE DAY. 10 May 1940. Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister. During the 1930s, he was widely seen as politically isolated. He took up the fight to stop Nazi Germany dominating Europe by force with determination and provided inspiration in his speeches.
May 10, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
OTD 65 yrs ago, the Soviet Union shot down a CIA U-2 reconnaissance plane over Sverdlovsk piloted by Francis Gary Powers. The Eisenhower administration initially lied to cover up the true purpose of the mission but was forced to admit the truth when the Soviets produced both Powers and the wreckage.
May 1, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Gavin Edwards
FACT OF THE DAY. 2 May 1945. Soviet Red Army captured Berlin to complete a comprehensive victory in the German-Soviet War which began on 22 June 1941 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Capturing Berlin was, however, tainted by many rapes carried out by the Red Army.
May 2, 2025 at 8:39 AM