On July 16th in military history....in 1945

On July 16th in military history....in 1945. The United States successfully detonates the world's first nuclear ("nu-klur" for rednecks) weapon at the Trinity test site in New Mexico, thereby insuring that World War II would end quickly, one way or another. In the winter of 1938, while the rest of Europe was preparing for war (at least the Germans), two scientists (Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch) were able to come up with the theory of "nu-klur" fission from observing experiments in Nazi Germany. The US got wind of this when a Danish scientist, Niels Bohr, came to American to visit Albert Einstein and the rest of his colleages at Princeton University to discuss the theory (and probably give us a leg up on the Nazis since Niels Bohr was Jewish).

The first "nu-klur" bomb did not just pop out of some scientist's evil mind. It took a number of years for everything to come together. For three years after the discussions with Einstein, scientists tried to validate the theory and actually produce a sustained "nu-klur" reaction in the laboratory. When the laboratory experiments were successful, the design of plants to generate enough fissionable material for "nu-klur" weapons took two years. After that, it took 18 months fo enough fissionable material to be generated for a bomb. During this time, the design of the bomb had to be found that would work. The culmination of all this work resulted in the Trinity test. The bomb used plutonium and generated 18.6 kilotons of energy and left a crater 3 meters deep and 330 meters wide in the New Mexico desert. The shock wave was felt 160 kms way and the mushroom cloud rose 12 kms into the sky.

Since that time, many people and scientists have commented about how they felt that they were opening the door on the destruction of the world, yada, yada, yada, ad nauseum. On the 60-year anniversary, "nu-klur" destruction has gone way down the list on how humans will destroy the world. Most likely we will destroy the world by electing some numbskull president who will decide that the interests of the world are more important that those of the US and will force us to bend over while the UN gives us the big, blue weinie and we congradulate ourselves on what good world citizens we are because we ratified the Kyoto treaty. Kind of like Canada.