enthalpy

Sunday, July 17, 2005


Happy birthday, nuclear age. You don't look a day over 50.
Thousands of people gathered Saturday at Trinity Site, a restricted area of the White Sands Missile Range, to mark the 60th anniversary of the world's first test of an atomic weapon.

Scientists working at Trinity site as part of The Manhattan Project created the nuclear device used in the test on July 16, 1945. That successful detonation led to the construction of the two atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan in August 1945, essentially stunning Japan into surrender and ending World War II.

The depression created by the blast at ground zero on what is now the White Sands Missile Range is marked by an obelisk with a simple inscription: "Trinity Site, Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945."
There's a lot of moralizing of the right and wrong of such devices in this article, so I won't get into any of that, but I will say one thing. Watch your ass, New Mexico. We bombed you once, and we'll do it again.



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