History
The creation of atomic weapons arose out of political and scientific developments of the late 1930s. The rise of fascist governments in Europe, new discoveries about the nature of atoms and the fear that Nazi Germany was working on developing atomic bombs converged in the plans of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada to develop powerful weapons using nuclear fission as their primary source of energy. The Manhattan Project, as the American nuclear physics effort was called, culminated in the test explosion of a nuclear device at what is now called the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few weeks later.
Read more about this topic: Trinity (nuclear Test)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)