The USS George Washington is launched. It is the first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.

USS George Washington (SSBN-598) was the United States's first operational ballistic missile submarine. She was the lead ship of her class of nuclear ballistic missile submarines, was the third United States Navy ship of the name, in honor of Founding Father George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States, and was the first of that name to be purpose-built as a warship.

Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. Nuclear decay processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators in some space probes such as Voyager 2. Reactors producing controlled fusion power have been operated since 1958 but have yet to generate net power and are not expected to be commercially available in the near future.

A ballistic missile submarine is a submarine capable of deploying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with nuclear warheads. These submarines became a major weapon system in the Cold War because of their nuclear deterrence capability. They can fire missiles thousands of kilometers from their targets, and acoustic quieting makes them difficult to detect, thus making them a survivable deterrent in the event of a first strike and a key element of the mutual assured destruction policy of nuclear deterrence. The deployment of ballistic missile submarines is dominated by the United States, Russia and China. In fact, 70% of nuclear warheads in the USA are carried by ballistic missile submarines.