A closer look

Oops, we almost evaporated the eastern seaboard, our bad. In 1961, a B-52 bomber broke apart in mid-air over Goldsboro, North Carolina, dropping two massive 3.8-megaton nuclear weapons. On one of the bombs, the parachute deployed and three out of its four arming mechanisms fully activated as it plummeted toward the earth. A catastrophic nuclear explosion that would have dwarfed Hiroshima was prevented by a single, flimsy, low-voltage safety switch that miraculously held.