December 2, 1942
Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born Nobel Prize-winning physicist, directed and controlled the first self-sustaining fission reaction in his laboratory beneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, making the atomic bomb possible and ushering in the nuclear age.
December 2, 1954
The U.S. Senate voted 65 to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for conduct unbecoming of a senator for his controversial investigation of suspected communists in the U.S. government, military, and civilian society. What is known as “McCarthyism” began on February 9, 1950, when McCarthy, an obscure Republican senator from Wisconsin, announced that he had a list of 205 communists who had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. The unsubstantiated declaration, little more than a publicity stunt, thrust Senator McCarthy into the national spotlight. Televised hearings earlier in 1954 exposed the senator as a reckless tyrant who never produced proper documentation for any of his claims.
