1945-07-16 New Mexico, USA / Trinity / Dreieinigkeit / Trindade / Trinidad

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds –

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon which was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project.

A base camp was constructed, and there were 425 people present on the weekend of the test. The code name Trinity was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, inspired by the poetry of John Donne, A Litany.

The Trinity

O blessed glorious Trinity,
Bones to philosophy, but milk to faith,
Which, as wise serpents, diversely
Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath,
As you distinguish’d, undistinct,
By power, love, knowledge be,
Give me a such self different instinct,
Of these let all me elemented be,
Of power, to love, to know you unnumbered three.

Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the father of the atomic bomb for his role in the Manhattan Project.

The light of a nuclear explosion is unlike anything else on Earth. This is because the heat of a nuclear explosion is unlike anything else on Earth.

Oppenheimer later remarked that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

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