USA Conducts First Test of the Atomic Bomb July 16,1945

The USA conducts the first test of the atomic bomb at at the Trinity bomb site in central New Mexico

The official U.S. development of the atomic bomb began with the establishment of the Manhattan Project in August 1942.The project brought together scientists from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to study the feasibility of building an atomic bomb capable of unimaginable destructive power.

By July 1945, a prototype weapon was ready for testing.

On July 16, the first atomic bomb was detonated in the desert near the Los Alamos research facility. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the project, watched the mushroom cloud rise into the New Mexico sky. "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds," he uttered, reciting a passage from an ancient Hindu text.

News of the successful test was relayed to President Harry S. Truman, who was meeting with Soviet leader  Joseph Stalin in Potsdam to discuss the postwar world.

Use of the weapon against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 demonstrated the destructive force of the atomic bomb.

The American atomic monopoly did not last long, though. By 1949, the Soviets had developed their own atomic bomb, marking the beginning of the Nuclear Arms Race