In 1961, the US almost detonated two nuclear bombs over North Carolina by accident

And then there’s this…

On January 23rd, 1961, the United States almost nuked itself by accident. On that day, according to a recently unclassified document obtained by The Guardian, the US Air Force mistakenly dropped a pair of hydrogen bombs over Goldsboro, North Carolina…

If the bombs had gone off, the carnage would have reached into Baltimore, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and New York city. “Yeah, it would have been bad news — in spades,” Parker F. Jones, then supervisor of nuclear weapons safety at the Sandia National Laboratories, writes in the formerly-secret document. “One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe!”