The bombing was the first-ever use of nuclear weapons in war and was followed three days later by a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki.
, marks 78 years since the US Army dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War II.
The nuclear weapon itself was dubbed the “Little Boy” and was the culmination of the scientific research of the Manhattan Project, led by Jewish scientist J. Robbert Oppenheimer and featuring other scientific luminaries such as Niles Bohr and Albert Einstein.
Its use marked the first-ever use of nuclear weapons in war and against a civilian population and is credited by many as changing the way war and diplomacy is carried out in the modern era.Oppenheimer’s legacy: What is an atomic bomb and how was it made?
An atomic bomb is, in its simplest form, a bomb that utilizes the process of nuclear fission, the splitting of then nucleus of an atom into two other nuclei, for the purpose of creating a massive and powerful explosion.
