18th May
1974
India joins the nuclear club
In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully
detonates its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in
explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima,
Japan.
The test, which made India the world's sixth nuclear power, broke
the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security
Council--the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China,
and France.
