More on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

March 4-5 marked an historic event. Over those two days, representatives from 127 governments and 16 national and international organizations convened in Oslo, Norway to attend the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. Sponsored by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), this was the first kind of this conference ever.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, two weeks when the world held its breath as the United States and the Soviet Union scrambled to avoid nuclear war (see a detailed history of the crisis as it unfolded). In the end, the crisis was averted with the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba and the Soviet Union agreeing to pull its missiles off the island.