Today is an Anniversary

[La Huerita]

Totally off topic, but since there is no heading for off topic discussions I'm putting this here even though it has nothing to do with Mexico. I'm quoting from someone else's story, who wrote about it better than I could. I hope you all don't mind; it's been on my mind this morning...

There were no headlines announcing it, but on this day in 1945 the world changed irrevocably. It was at Alamagordo, New Mexico. Local time, at 5:29:45 the world's first nuclear device was exploded, the near Northern edge of what is now the White Sands Missile Range. And the world was changed forever.

Trinity was an implosion device, fueled as would be second bomb at Nagasaki with Plutonium. It had the force of about 20 kilotons of TNT.

The test was under the supervision of Kenneth Bainbridge of Harvard, himself overseen by George Kistiakowsky, who as an explosive experts had solved how to make the compression of the hollow sphere of plutonium work perfectly.

When the test worked, Bainbridge told Robert Oppenheimer, Now we are all sons of bitches." Later Oppenheimer said what he thought, when they experienced the results of the test, words from the sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita:

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
​

And so the Nuclear Age began, 64 years ago today.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/16/754027/-I-am-become-Death,-the-destroyer-of-worlds.

I have never lived in a world without the nuclear threat. Have you? Just musing, I know many ways that this affected my life. I wonder what effects I've never thought of?

On a brighter note, let me add that today is also an anniversary of another sort: 40 years ago, humanity reached for the moon with Apollo 11. All is not lost.

Thanks for listening. Carry on. :-|