Lithium hydride
Before the Castle Bravo nuclear weapons test in 1954, it was thought that only the less common isotope lithium-6 would breed tritium when struck with fast neutrons. The Castle Bravo test showed (accidentally) that the more plentiful lithium-7 also does so under extreme conditions, albeit by an endothermic reaction.
Radiophobia
March 1, 1954, the operation Castle Bravo testing of a then, first of its kind, experimental thermonuclear "Shrimp" device, overshot its predicted yield of 4–6 megatons and instead produced 15 megatons; this resulted in an unanticipated amount of "Bikini snow" or visible particles of nuclear fallout being produced, fallout which caught the Japanese fishing boat the Daigo Fukuryū Maru or "Lucky Dragon" in its plume, even though it was fishing outside the initially predicted ~5 megaton fallout area which had been cordoned off for the Castle Bravo test. Approximately 2 weeks after the test and fallout exposure, the 23-member fishing crew began to fall ill, with acute radiation sickness, largely brought on by beta burns that were caused by direct contact between the "Bikini snow" fallout and their skin, through their practice of scooping the "Bikini snow" into bags with their bare hands. One member of the crew, Kuboyama Aikichi the boat's chief radioman, died 7 months later, on September 23, 1954. It was later estimated that about a hundred fishing boats were contaminated to some degree by fallout from the test. Inhabitants of the Marshall Islands were also exposed to fallout, and a number of islands had to be evacuated.