History
The first ballistic missile was the A-4, commonly known as the V-2 rocket, developed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s under direction of Wernher von Braun. The first successful launch of a V-2 was on October 3, 1942 and began operation on September 6, 1944 against Paris, followed by an attack on London two days later. By the end of World War II, May 1945, over 3,000 V-2s had been launched.
A total of 30 nations have deployed operational ballistic missiles. Development continues, with around 100 ballistic missile flight tests (not including those of the US) in 2007, mostly by China, Iran and the Russian Federation. In 2010 the US and Russian governments signed a treaty to reduce their inventory of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) over a seven year period (to 2017) to 1550 units each.
Read more about this topic: Ballistic Missile
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“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
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“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
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