Doomsday Clock (A World of Difference)

The Doomsday Clock is a is a symbolic clock face, maintained since 1948 by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Cairo (Illinois). The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the world is estimated to be to global disaster. The most recent officially announced setting — three minutes to midnight (11:57pm) — was made on 10 January 2012. Reflecting international events dangerous to humankind, the clock's hands have been adjusted twenty times since its inception in 1947, when the clock was initially set to seven minutes to midnight (11:53pm). Originally, the clock analogy represented the threat of global nuclear war; however, since 2001 it has also reflected climate-changing technologies and "new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm."

Times

 * 1948: 11:55 (American detonation of the first nuclear weapon.)
 * 1949: 11:58 (French and Russian detonations of nuclear weapons, first use of nuclear weapons in war.)
 * 1950: 11:57 (Russo-American Nuclear Arms Use Reduction Treaty signed.)
 * 1951: 11:56 (France signs NAURT treaty and joins NAURT Organization.)
 * 1952: 11:57 (Japan first detonates nuclear weapons.)
 * 1953: 11:54 (Japan, France, Russia, the United States, Castile, and Scandinavia sign the NUART II Treaty.)
 * 1954: 11:52 (Russia, France, and the United States sign the Nuclear Weapons Reduction Treaty.)
 * 1955: 11:55 (Siam threatens to nuke Saigon during the Indochinese War.)
 * 1963: 11:50 (NUART III Treaty signed by NUART II signatories, England, Ottoman Empire, Patagonia, Australasia, Maghreb, Germany, Austria, and Italy.)
 * 1978: 11:59 (Muratian Missile Crisis)
 * 1981: 11:59 (Falsely percepted Russian nuclear attack on France, and Japan on the United States.)
 * 1993: 11:58 (NUART III Treaty expires during the Colombian Civil War, Brazil threatens nukes.)