Picture of the Day and Birthdays for July 16

Posted July 16, 2008, 5:39 am by Growing Bolder


Today is Wednesday, July 16, the 198th day of 2008. There are 168 days left in the year.

Today's Birthdays: Former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh is 76. Soul singer William Bell is 69. Former tennis player Margaret Court is 66. Violinist Pinchas Zukerman is 60. Dancer Michael Flatley is 50. Actress Phoebe Cates is 45. Actor-comedian Will Ferrell is 41.

Picture of the Day: The first ever nuclear explosion to occur on Earth was 63 years ago today, July 16, 1945 in the New Mexico desert. Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist known as the "Father of the Atom Bomb", conducted the experiment that was code-named, "Trinity." A few seconds after the flash and the blast wave, Oppenheimer quoted Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." One month later the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ending WWII.

This is a rare and very interesting color film clip about the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test. It's only 3 minutes long. Check it out.

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