Dropping a nuclear bomb on your own country is one of the dumbest mistakes a military can ever make. And would you believe it happened twice in the USA? Yes, it did.

It happened to the Carolinas over a span of just three years. Bad luck for both states. The good news is the nuclear warheads didn't explode on both occasions.

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On March 11, 1958, a US Air Force B-47 bomber on a training exercise accidentally dropped its 26 kiloton Mark 6 nuclear bomb, which was way more powerful than the nuke dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on a house in rural South Carolina.

The nuclear bomb's non-nuclear explosives weighing 7,600 lbs. detonated on impact with the ground after falling 15,000 feet. The massive explosion destroyed the house of Walter Gregg and flattened a section of a nearby forest.

The explosion created a mushroom cloud seen for miles and gouged out a 25-foot-deep crater. Luckily, no one was killed but several persons were injured.

Until today, the 75-foot wide crater can still be seen along South Carolina's Highway 76, which as a chilling reminder of the stupidity that caused this near catastrophe.

An investigation into the incident revealed that pilots of the B-47 noticed a "fault light in the cockpit," which meant there was a glitch in the bomb harness' locking pin.

To fix the technical problem, Captain Bruce Kulka checked the glitch and "while pulling himself up from the plane floor, he reached around the bomb to steady himself, but ended up grabbing the bomb's emergency release pin instead."

This mistake dropped the nuclear bomb.

The second almost apocalyptic nuclear accident occurred three years later and in North Carolina, The Guardian reports. The incident in 1961 occurred over Goldsboro and saw two hydrogen bombs plunge earthwards after the US Air Force B-52 bomber carrying them broke apart in mid-air.

Recently released documents show that a catastrophe equal to that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was averted by a miracle. Then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said that by the " ... slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted."

If both weapons had exploded, they would have killed 28,000 Americans and injured 26,000 others. The Mark 39 nuclear bombs weighed 10,000 pounds and their explosive yield was 3.8 megatons. The bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of 0.01 and 0.02 megatons, respectively.

The parachute of the first bomb opened and the weapon landed intact. Luckily, the safing pins that provided power from a generator to the bomb had been removed -- preventing the weapon from exploding.

The parachute of the second bomb failed to open and the impact of the crash put armed the bomb. Fortunately, the crash damaged a part of the bomb needed to detonate the nuclear explosive.

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