The symbol of nuclear destruction turns 75 this month.

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The Doomsday Clock, created in the aftermath of the first atomic bombs, remains a symbol that warns the world about nuclear confrontation, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Scientists after World War II commissioned artist Martyl Langsdorf to create an image that would “frighten men into rationality,” according to Eugene Rabinowitch, the first editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

In 1947 the Cold War was in full swing, and scientists wanted to show Americans how close the world was to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Langsdorf worked with several images before settling on a simple clock.

“The most significant of all was a sketch of a clock, which I made on the 8-by-11-inch back of a bound copy of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas,” Langsdorf told the Tribune. “A clock in white paint on the black binding of the Sonatas.”

>> Doomsday Clock moves closer than ever to midnight

A clock symbolizes urgency. Langsdorf placed the long hand of the clock at seven minutes before midnight, the newspaper reported.

The name -- Doomsday Clock -- conjured up the biblical prophecy of the day the world will end.

Rabinowitch moved the hand to three minutes to midnight in 1949. In 2021, it was moved to 100 seconds before midnight.

“The distant rumbling of the first Soviet atomic bomb shows the world well advanced toward the abyss of an atomic war,” Rabinowitch said at the time.

Since then, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has annually announced if the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand has moved closer to or away from midnight, according to The Associated Press.

This year’s “reveal” will be performed virtually on Thursday, the Tribune reported.

The Doomsday Clock is heard in the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s 1983 recording “Two Suns in the Sunset.” The clock appears in the background of Sting’s 1985 music video for the song “Russians,” according to the Tribune.

It also was featured in Yael Bartana’s play “What if Women Ruled the World” and in episodes of the television series “Madame President” and “Criminal Minds.”

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