July 16, 1945
The first atomic bomb exploded, Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico. Detonation was not made public for three weeks, when two others like it devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Powered by a sphere of plutonium the size of an orange, it produced a fireball that rose 8,000 feet in a fraction of a second, pushing a mushroom cloud 41,000 feet high. Nearby residents were told an ammunition dump had exploded.
