The Trinity Atomic Bomb Test
Just before dawn on July 16, 1945, the first atomic test bomb was exploded at a site called Trinity in the New Mexican desert. It was the culmination of 28 months of intense scientific research conducted under the leadership of physicist Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (seen above) under the code name Manhattan Project. The successful atomic test was witnessed by only one journalist, William L. Laurence of the New York Times, who described seeing the blinding explosion: ‘One felt as though he had been privileged to…be present at the moment of the Creation when the Lord said: Let There be Light.’ Oppenheimer’s own thoughts from the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita were very different: ‘I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.’
Photo: Library of Congress
