On This Day

On the morning of July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert120 miles south of Santa Fe, the first atomic bomb was detonated. It created the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretched 40,000 feet into the air and generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT.

A footnote: The original $6,000 budget for the Manhattan Project finally ballooned to a total cost of $2 billion.