Editing Mushroom cloud (section)

==Early accounts and origins of term==
[[File:Vue du siege de Gibraltar et explosion des batteries flottantes 1782.jpeg|thumb|right|''Vue du siège de Gibraltar et explosion des batteries flottantes'' View of the [[Great Siege of Gibraltar|Siege of Gibraltar]] and the Explosion of the Floating Batteries, artist unknown, {{Circa|1782}}]]
Although the term appears to have been coined in the early 1950s, mushroom clouds generated by explosions were being described centuries before the [[Atomic Age]]. A contemporary [[aquatint]] by an unknown artist of the [[Great Siege of Gibraltar#The Grand Assault|1782 Franco-Spanish attack on Gibraltar]] shows one of the attacking force's [[floating battery|floating batteries]] exploding with a mushroom cloud after the British defenders set it ablaze by firing [[heated shot]].

[[File:1798 veith - physikalischer kinderfreund.jpg|thumb|Mushroom cloud in an engraving from Gerhard Vieth's ''Physikalischer Kinderfreund'', 1798]]
In 1798, Gerhard Vieth published a detailed and illustrated account of a cloud in the neighborhood of [[Gotha]] that was "not unlike a mushroom in shape". The cloud had been observed by legation counselor Lichtenberg a few years earlier on a warm summer afternoon. It was interpreted as an irregular meteorological cloud and seemed to have caused a storm with rain and thunder from a new dark cloud that developed beneath it. Lichtenberg stated to have later observed somewhat similar clouds, but none as remarkable.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb11110701?page=95|title=MDZ-Reader &#124; Band &#124; Physikalischer Kinderfreund / Vieth, Gerhard Ulrich Anton &#124; Physikalischer Kinderfreund / Vieth, Gerhard Ulrich Anton|website=reader.digitale-sammlungen.de}}</ref>

The 1917 [[Halifax Explosion]] produced a mushroom cloud. In 1930 [[Olaf Stapledon]] in his novel ''[[Last and First Men]]'' imagines the first demonstration of an atomic weapon "clouds of steam from the boiling sea.. a gigantic mushroom of steam and debris". ''[[The Times]]'' published a report on 1 October 1937 of a Japanese attack on [[Shanghai]], [[China]], that generated "a great mushroom of smoke". During [[World War II]], the destruction of the Japanese battleship ''[[Japanese battleship Yamato|Yamato]]'' produced a mushroom cloud.<ref>Reynolds, Clark G (1982). ''The Carrier War''. Time-Life Books. {{ISBN|978-0-8094-3304-9}}. p. 169.</ref>

The atomic bomb cloud over [[Nagasaki]], Japan, was described in ''The Times'' of London of 13 August 1945 as a "huge mushroom of smoke and dust". On 9 September 1945, ''[[The New York Times]]'' published an eyewitness account of the Nagasaki bombing, written by [[William L. Laurence]], the official newspaper correspondent of the [[Manhattan Project]], who accompanied one of the three aircraft that made the bombing run. He wrote of the bomb producing a "pillar of [[Ionized-air glow|purple fire]]" out of the top of which came "a giant mushroom that increased the height of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet".<ref>[http://www.hiroshima-remembered.com/documents/Nagasaki.html Eyewitness Account of Atomic Bomb Over Nagasaki] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110106182841/http://www.hiroshima-remembered.com/documents/Nagasaki.html |date=2011-01-06}} hiroshima-remembered.com. Retrieved on 2010-08-09.</ref>

In 1946, the [[Operation Crossroads]] nuclear bomb tests were described as having a "[[cauliflower]]" cloud, but a reporter present also spoke of "the mushroom, now the common symbol of the atomic age". Mushrooms have traditionally been associated both with life and death, food and poison, which made them a more powerful symbolic connection than, say, the "cauliflower" cloud.<ref>{{cite book|author=Weart, Spencer|title=Nuclear Fear: A History of Images|place=Cambridge, Massachusetts|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1987|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NuFubjYl1poC|isbn=978-0-674-62836-6|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160610123625/https://books.google.com/books?id=NuFubjYl1poC&printsec=frontcover|archive-date=2016-06-10}}</ref>