Word: cerium
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Unofficial Watch. Peter King sent an assistant on a rush trip to the Virgin Islands; soon the aide was back with jugs of sludge precipitated chemically from 2,500 gal. of six-month-old rain water. The stuff was faintly hot, containing the radioactive cerium and yttrium that are typical products of nuclear fission. As of then, King knew he had a quick and easy way to detect nuclear explosions...
...September, 1949 King heard from the Air Force of indications that the Russians might have successfully tested an atomic bomb. He sent a rush message-"To hell with the monthly schedule"-for fresh rain water from Kodiak. Within a few hours, he was able to identify radioactive cerium, which could only have come from a nuclear explosion. The U.S. had had no recent A-bomb tests. There was only one possible conclusion-and a few days later, President Harry Truman announced to the world the news, picked up by Peter King's Operation Rainbarrel, that the Russians had broken...