First Soviet nuclear explosion: The RDS (Russian: “Russia does it itself”) is detonated on a 38-meter concrete tower in Technical Area Sh in Facility 905 in Kazakhstan; the explosion is 22 kilotons; it will be the first of 715 national nuclear tests; 9 days later an American B29 will take air samples over the Pacific Ocean with special filters and will thus be able to detect the nuclear explosion; Joe-1, as the test is named by the Americans, is an accurate copy of the American plutonium bomb, or Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki.
