Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
The Atomic Age began with the United States’ first nuclear weapon test, code-named ‘Trinity’, on 16 July 1945. The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred just a few weeks later. The following 70 years saw the spread of nuclear weapons to nine nations, including North Korea, which conducted the world’s most recent nuclear weapons tests in 2006 and 2009. This visualisation from the Canada-based artists Orbital Mechanics charts every nuclear detonation on record, showing the trickle of humanity’s most destructive weapon, from its first test in the US to all corners of the globe.
Video by Orbital Mechanics
video
Architecture
A 3D rendering of the Colosseum captures its architectural genius and symbolic power
17 minutes
video
Values and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
video
Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
video
History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation
7 minutes
video
Design and fashion
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery
14 minutes
video
Information and communication
‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph
36 minutes