On 24 January 1946, the very first resolution of the UN General Assembly called for the ‘elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons’. More than 71 years later, in Conference Room 1 at the United Nations in New York at 10:47 on 7 July 2017, governments voted 122 to 1 to adopt the text of a historic Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (UN General Assembly, 2017). A room filled for weeks with formal procedure, composed diplomats and committed campaigners erupted with applause, joy, tears and embraces