On this day
Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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in Bonn
Gen Cong meets, Plymouth, Mass
comment on leadership contests
Eisenhower says Council reaffirmed policies in W Pacific
Defeated for re-election
1954Barry Cowsill, American singer-songwriter, keyboard player, and producer (died 2005)[†]
Barry Steven Cowsill was an American musician, songwriter and producer. He was the bassist of the musical group The Cowsills, who had three top-10 singles in the late 1960s.
1954David Wojnarowicz, American painter and photographer (died 1992)[†]
David Michael Wojnarowicz was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorporated personal narratives influenced by his struggle with AIDS as well as his political activism in his art until his death from the disease in 1992.
1954In a top secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber drops a 40 kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village.[†]
The Totskoye nuclear exercise was a military exercise undertaken by the Soviet Army to explore defensive and offensive warfare during nuclear war. The exercise, under the code name "Snowball", involved an aerial detonation of a 40 kt RDS-4 nuclear bomb. The stated goal of the operation was military training for breaking through heavily fortified defensive lines of a military opponent using nuclear weapons. An army of 45,000 soldiers marched through the area around the hypocenter soon after the nuclear blast. The exercise was conducted on September 14, 1954, at 9.33 a.m., under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov to the north of Totskoye village in Orenburg Oblast, Russia, in the South Ural Military District. The epicenter of the detonation is marked with a memorial.
In 1954, the world population was approximately 2,685,894,860 people[†]