What event changed humanity forever on July 16, 1945?

Nuclear weapons have enormous destructive powers and are sometimes called "the destroyers of the worlds". Their history began on the 16th of July, 1945.

At 5:29:45 a.m., the Manhattan Project comes to an explosive end as the first atom bomb is successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico. This event changed the course of the history of humanity and influenced many spheres of our lives. Many people consider the consequences of the detonation mostly negative.

On the morning of July 16,in the New Mexico desert the first atomic bomb in the history of mankind was detonated. The scientists and a few dignitaries had moved 10,000 yards away to watch the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretching 40,000 feet into the air. The tower on which the bomb sat when detonated disappeared immediately.

A footnote: The original $6,000 budget for the Manhattan Project finally ballooned to a total cost of $2 billion.
A little over a month later, the United States used two atomic bombs on Japan to effectively end WWII.
The nuclear race began, and two years later, in 1947, the "Doomsday Clock" began ticking down.

More Info: www.history.com

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69 Comments

Carmine-James Pitaniello

Jean, at the time, nobody could imagine the destruction. The original test did not have a town set up. They came in later tests. The original test was done on a tower, and not as powerful as either Fat Man or Little Boy. Since that date, the Doomsday clock has been ticking. I carried three nukes in my B-52 for 10 years, and I still have nighmares about having to drop them. By the grace of God, and diplomacy, I was never called upon to do that. I still have nightmares... 38 years later.

Laurie Johnson Gonzalez

My dad was in the Navy and was on one of the ships waiting to see if the bombs ended the war. If the Japanese still did not surrender my dad would probably have died. I do not know the facts and figures, but I know the experts estimated the death toll to Americans and Japanese would have been a heck of a lot more than those who died from the bombs. Revisionists would like you to believe the evil Americans did this to the innocent Japanese for no good reason. But if you look at the Japanese culture and study up on the war, you will know that no matter how bad the bombs were, the alternative (continuing the war) would have been worse.

Doris A. Carboni Schneider

Can't cure many horrible diseases but can kill millions SAD

carlthedad

It was not nuclear, it was atomic. A totally different thing. I wish people would learn the difference.

Jas Newman

Pierre Poirier, Re your "That 1 million lost lives was invented , i believe after the fact." —You believe? What makes your belief the authority? In fact, the estimates were based on the concrete math of the 150,000 casualties of the relatively small (compared to an invasion of the Japanese main islands) Battle of Okinawa. The casualties of that battle were still being reported to families back home as the A-bomb decisions were being made. But you "believe" the people faced with hard decisions were "making it up."

Jeanette Madea

The two bombs were dropped on Japan less than a month later, not a little more than a month later.

William Laughlin

You are correct! The first test July 16, 1945, Hiroshima August 6, 1945, Nagasaki August 9, 1945. Both less than a month later.

Lindy Carmalt

Carmine-James Pitaniello, Bless your heart!! At least you did NOT have to drop them - remind yourself of that when you go to bed & maybe the nightmares will ease off, at least a bit - I hope so!

Rafi Manory

People do not remember that the Russians have already invaded the islands north of Hokkaido and they were going to conquer Hokkaido. The US already had bad experience with sharing a country with Stalin...it was imperative that the Japanese surrender to the Americans and not to Russia. This is what the nuclear bombs have achieved. And even the Japanese know that without them Japan wouldn't have surrendered.

Kimberly Kennedy

Did they intentionally leave out the fact that it was the U.S. detonated the first atomic bomb? We Americans are famous, for selectively whitewashing our historical facts.

Will Boyd

Tell that to the survivors of Nanking, Seoul, Papau New Gunia, Pearl Harbor, Guam, and others who were used as practice for the Japanese war machine. I worked with a survivor of the Bataan death march and had a patient who was a captured marine on Corregidor who spent three years in a Japanese pow camp who watched numerous fellow soldiers being beheaded or beat to death or bayoneted for such infractions as not bowing low enough to their captururs. God bless Warren, he just passed at 97 yrs old six weeks ago. God Bless America! Char,

Will Boyd

Although, the bombs by conservative estimates, saved over two million lives, of our troops and of the Japanese. It forestalled the invasion of Japan.The bombs are also a deterrent to some major scale wars. But for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg giving our nuclear secrets to the bomb to Russia, the USA would have been the only country with this weapon, and consequently, with the infiltration of Russian agents in the FDR administration, uncle joe Stalin knew that we only had two bombs (used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) so hence his decision to keep territory captured by his trooos and his decision to forget agreements made at Tge Yalta conference. FYI, the technetium residual is and has been used in medical studies and exams because of the Manhattan project , while atomic energy derived from this as well is clean and energy efficient, despite what Jane Fonda and the jack lemon movie decried. Doris A. Carboni Schneider,

Clyde

Carmine-James Pitaniello, Thanks for sharing.

pamela h

Carmine-James Pitaniello, Thank you for your service

Char

What bothers me is we didn't attack Japanese leaders or soldiers we attacked innocents who may have like us hated the war. No country is made up of all individuals who love war..Even German soldiers talked about their experiences seeing our dead soldiers as men like themselves not someone evil..

Char

Laurie Johnson Gonzalez, the Japanese were innocents hospitals and the like I will never glorify it as ending a war and saving lives. It was a horrid war and the Japanese leaders started ir but still all these years later they have so much trouble so the innocents are still paying as in Chernobyl.