On 16 July 1945, the ‘Trinity’ nuclear test plunged humanity into the so-called Atomic Age. The first-ever nuclear bomb was detonated in New Mexico, at the Alamogordo Test Range. Nicknamed the “gadget”, the plutonium-based implosion-type device yielded 19 kilotons, creating a crater over 300 metres wide.
No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun.
T.F. Farrell, brigadier general on the staff the Manhattan Project's military commander
