Video: 'Spy Saga of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg - Decades TV Network'

(Thursday, March 29, 1951, 11:00 a.m. EST; during the Cold War) — Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted today in New York of conspiracy to commit espionage for passing atomic weapons information to the Soviet Union.

The couple was accused of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs; at that time the United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons.

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They would be executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 in the Sing Sing correctional facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime.

Video: 'ABC News 45/85 part 1 (Original Broadcast Version)' (Rosenbergs at 28:01)

Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass (who had made a plea agreement), Harry Gold and Morton Sobell.

Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.