50 years ago today the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was signed by the US, the Soviet Union, Britain and 58 other nations. Negotiated over three years, the treaty was designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and their technology, to promote cooperation around the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament. As of August 2016, 191 states have adhered to the agreement, a testament to the treaty’s significance. (1968)
Still in force today, the treaty’s main tenant is this: The non-nuclear-weapon states agree never to acquire nuclear weapons and, in exchange, the nuclear-weapon states agree to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
MORE Good News on this Day:
- Willie Dixon, the blues singer and guitarist called ‘the poet laureate of the blues’, who wrote more than 500 songs, some of them timeless classics, was born (1915)
- The Medicare federal insurance program for health care went into effect in the U.S. (1966)
- East Germany and West Germany reunited, merging their economies under the Deutsche Mark currency, with help from Western countries that granted subsidies to pay bills for the East and ease the deep gap in budgets (1990)
- Vermont’s civil unions law went into effect (2000)
- 500,000 people marched in Hong Kong to protest a new anti-subversion law…. one year later, 530,000 rallied for democratization and universal suffrage (2003)
- For the first time in history, the U.S. Navy promoted a woman, Adm. Michelle J. Howard – also the first African-American – to become a four-star admiral (2014)
- Today is Canada Day, a national holiday celebrating Canada’s founding, and the date in 1980 when the song, O, Canada, became the national anthem.
- It is…
