Chilling photos show how atomic bomb tests in the Nevada desert brought LA to a standstill in the 1950s

In the 1950s it wasn't uncommon for Los Angeles to have two sunrises. The United States government conducted 928 atomic bomb tests in the Nevada Test Site, approximately 240 miles away from the City of Angels, from 1951 until 1992.  Those tests went off just 65 miles from the city of Las Vegas where thousands of people flocked to visit the iconic strip.   One hundred of the tests were atmospheric, according to Amusing Planet, with enormous mush room clouds.    The light given off by atmospheric atomic tests turned night into day for Los Angeles and Las Vegas and reporters and curious locals snapped photographs of the phenomenon. 

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 Nearly 1,000 atomic bomb tests (pictured) were detonated in the Nevada Test Site in the Nevada Desert from 1951 until 1992

 Atomic bomb mushroom cloud seen from the Old Frontier Village (pictured) in Las Vegas stopped swimmers in their tracks as the nation became enamored with the tests 

 The tests went off just 65 miles from the city of Las Vegas (pictured) where thousands of people flocked to visit the iconic strip

Newspapers covered the events, which were considered spectacular despite their regularity.  

'At first, the images seem rather mundane for looking so much like a sunrise — the difference of course is that this fission-born light comes straight from man’s handiwork, and heralds the beginning of an arms race that in the 1960s tilted perilously close to Armageddon,' Wired reported.