Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (pictured) were executed as spies for passing nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

American spies for the Soviet Union (d. 1953)

Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951,…

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion reactions, producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively…