Boom! and Boo! …

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From 100 miles away, the crew of the Tu-95V plane found themselves looking up at the bottom of the mushroom cloud created by the bomb they had dropped several minutes before. After the crew dropped the bomb, the pilot flew the plane as fast as possible from the impending explosion: when the plane was twenty-eight miles away, the device detonated, and the shock wave traversed that distance almost instantaneously and knocked the plane a mile-and-a-half down and away. The crew safely landed the plane, but not before they took photos of Tsar Bomba’s mushroom cloud (above), the largest thermonuclear weapon—thus, the largest weapon—yet detonated on the planet.

The Soviet Union exploded Tsar Bomba 55 years ago on this date.
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The Statue of Liberty National Monument was dedicated in New York Harbor on this date in 1886. President Grover Cleveland (he was a former New York State governor) was among the dignitaries.

The huge statue, a gift from France, was hidden behind an enormous cloth, and a signal was to be given when the final speech was done to drop the cloth and reveal the work. The last speaker, U.S. Senator William Evarts, had been on the committee that raised funds to build the pedestal for the statue. He paused in the middle of the speech, and this was interpreted as the end, so the signal was given, and the veil was dropped. With that, guns were fired from hips in the harbor for the next 30 minutes, and Sen. Evarts sat down.
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