July 16, 1945 –
…If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One – I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds…. – thus began the Atomic Age.
Fittingly, in a desert named Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death,) code-named Trinity, the first experimental plutonium bomb (The Gadget) was detonated in a United States test of an atomic explosion at Alamogordo Air Base, Los Alamos, New Mexico on this date. The explosion yields the equivalent 18,000 tons of TNT.
The highly anticipated new bio-pix about Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project opens next week.
July 16, 1969 –
54 years ago on this date, the 363-foot-tall Apollo 11 space vehicle was launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, at 9:37 a.m. (As I have gotten older, I have only now put it together that some sick puppies at NASA (probably some of the ‘Good Germans‘) arranged to have the launch on the anniversary of the Trinity test.)
It carried Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr.
The Haus of Dcaligari 