:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 7.17.2005 ::
:: Trinity Site 60 Years Later ::
Thousands Mark World's First Atomic Blast
WHITE SANDS MISSLE RANGE, N.M. (AP) - Thousands of people gathered Saturday at Trinity Site, a restricted area of the White Sands Missile Range, to mark the 60th anniversary of the world's first test of an atomic weapon.
Scientists working at Trinity site as part of The Manhattan Project created the nuclear device used in the test on July 16, 1945. That successful detonation led to the construction of the two atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan in August 1945, essentially stunning Japan into surrender and ending World War II.
The depression created by the blast at ground zero on what is now the White Sands Missile Range is marked by an obelisk with a simple inscription: "Trinity Site, Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945."
A long stretch of dirt road leads to a chain-link fence surrounding the monument. On the fence hang photographs of Manhattan Project scientists from Los Alamos assembling the device and of the brilliant mushroom cloud.
Visitors stooped to pick up pieces of trininite, a radioactive, turquoise crystal-like material that was created by the blast. About a dozen people walked over the site with Geiger counters that beeped sporadically.
Missile Range officials tell visitors not to fear radiation. On average, an American is exposed to 360 millirem of radiation from natural and medical sources every year. In an hour at the Trinity site, visitors are exposed to one half millirem, according to a brochure distributed by the missile range.
Emmett Hatch, who visited Trinity Site on Saturday, recalled how his grandmother ordered him to drop to his knees and pray on July 16, 1945, shortly after the atomic blast.
She was awake at 5:29:45 Mountain War Time that morning in Portales to make breakfast and saw the explosion from more than 220 miles away.
"She thought it was the coming of the Lord, because the sun rose in the west that day," said Hatch, who was 8 years old at the time.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 9:22:00 AM [+] ::
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