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"Renowned Canadian author and historian Norman Leach will be visiting Terrace this week to speak about his book 'Broken Arrow-America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon' to mark the 60th anniversary of the historic aviation accident. Leach will be lecturing across the Northwest to schools, museums, libraries and community centers from Houston to Terrace to inspire, students and adults alike to develop a healthy interest in their community's local history. On the eve of Valentine's Day, 1950, an American Strategic Air Command B-36 bomber loaded with an atomic bomb, was flying a simulated bombing run from Alaska to San Francisco. "

In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland's Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case. Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas. It was a little early to be swimming in the Mediterranean that year. But in early March 1966, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, the Spanish information minister at the time, and Biddle Duke, the American ambassador in Madrid, together with their respective families, plunged into the chilly waters off the Costa Cálida. Journalists from around the world had gathered on the beach of the small village of Palomares to report on the two families' spring bathing outing. Their interest would have been surprising, if it hadn't been for the hydrogen bomb lying on the ocean floor only a few kilometers away, a bomb with more than 1,000 times the explosive force of the one that flattened Hiroshima.

The incident came amid the height of the Cold War, when American B52 bombers were flying continuously around the country's Thule Air Base to keep watch for possible missile strikes from the USSR. Pentagon chiefs believed that the Soviet Union would seek to eradicate the base, whose ability to scan surrounding skies made it strategically crucial. They also feared a strike on the base could be a prelude to an attack on the US mainland. Unbeknown to Denmark - of which Greenland is a self-governing province - the B52s were carrying nuclear bombs, in anticipation of flying direct to Moscow if any Soviet missiles destroyed the base.

A hydrogen bomb is missing from the United States' arsenal - and has been, evidently, for 40 years. When last seen, the bomb was one of four aboard an Air Force B-52 bomber that crashed on a frozen bay near Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland on Jan. 21, 1968. At first, all four bombs were unaccounted for, according to a front-page article in The New York Times on Jan. 23, 1968:

The crash of a B-52 aircraft, armed with nuclear warheads, in north-west Greenland back in 1968 has left a lasting legacy, according to those involved in the clear-up and those who live in the region now. There are claims of long-term damage to the environment and to the health of individuals, allegations disputed by the governments involved. Following the fire aboard the aircraft, the high explosives surrounding the nuclear weapons exploded but without setting off the actual nuclear devices, which were not armed.

A BBC investigation uncovered evidence of a fourth undiscovered nuclear bomb from the Thule crash in 1968, Greenland has known about it for a decade The Thule workers' association already knew about the fourth nuclear bomb back in 1999, said Jens Zinglersen, the chairman of the group of workers affected by the radiation.

THE rest of the world has mostly forgotten, but a brush with nuclear Armageddon more than 40 years ago is still seared in the minds of many residents of a small Spanish fishing town. On the morning of January 17, 1966, a US Air Force B-52 bomber returning from a routine mission collided with a tanker aircraft that was to refuel it.

Nuclear submarines from Britain and France collided deep in the Atlantic Ocean this month, authorities said Monday in the first acknowledgment of a highly unusual accident that one expert called the gravest in nearly a decade. Officials said the low-speed crash did not damage the vessels' nuclear reactors or missiles or cause radiation to leak. But anti-nuclear groups said it was still a frightening reminder of the risks posed by submarines prowling the oceans powered by radioactive material and bristling with nuclear weapons. The first public indication of a mishap came when France reported in a little-noticed Feb. 6 statement that one of its submarine had struck a submerged object - perhaps a shipping container. But confirmation of the accident only came after British media reported it.

According to Daniel Ellsberg, the weapon could have accidentally fired because "five of the six safety devices had failed." Nuclear physicist Ralph E. Lapp supported this assertion, saying that "only a single switch" had "prevented the bomb from detonating and spreading fire and destruction over a wide area." nuclearbomb shadow shadow shadow ***** It (a B-52 bomber) was carrying two nuclear weapons, each 1,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. One of the bombs dropped on the countryside and didn't explode. It had six safety locks on, and when it was found, five of them had flipped. It would have destroyed all housing within a circle of 25 miles and ignited all things burnable within a 75-mile radius. --Lloyd J. Dumas, author of Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous