ON THESE DAYS - 16 JULY 1945 AND 17 JULY 2014

 ---------ooOoo----------

 July 16, 1945 

First atomic bomb exploded.

Trinity was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. 

The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, or "gadget", of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Concerns about whether the complex Fat Man design would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test. The code name "Trinity" was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, possibly inspired by the poetry of John Donne. 

The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (renamed the White Sands Proving Ground just before the test). 

Some 425 people were present on the weekend of the Trinity test. The Trinity bomb released the explosive energy of 25 kilotons of TNT and a large cloud of fallout. Thousands of people lived closer to the test than would have been allowed under guidelines adopted for subsequent tests, but no one living near the test was evacuated before or afterward.

The test site was declared a National Historic Landmark district in 1965 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year.

 

Trinity Site obelisk.

The black plaque on top reads: Trinity Site Where The World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded On July 16, 1945 Erected 1965 White Sands Missile Range J. Frederick Thorlin Major General U.S. Army Commanding

The gold plaque below it declares the site a National Historic Landmark, and reads: Trinity Site has been designated a National Historical Landmark This Site Possesses National Significance In Commemorating The History of the United States of America 1975 National Park Service United States Department of the Interior

 ----------ooOoo----------

July 17, 2014

Malaysian airliner shot down

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces with a surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed.

The responsibility for investigation was delegated to the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and the Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT), which in 2016 reported that the aircraft had been downed by a surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine. The JIT found that the missile had been transported from Russia on the day of the crash, fired from a field in a rebel-controlled area, and that the launch system returned to Russia afterwards.

On the basis of the JIT's conclusions, the governments of the Netherlands and Australia held Russia responsible and began pursuing legal remedies in May 2018. The Russian government denied involvement in the shooting down of the aircraft and its account of how the aircraft was shot down has varied over time.

On 17 November 2022, following a trial in absentia in the Netherlands, two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist were found guilty of murdering all 298 people on board flight MH17. The Dutch court also ruled that Russia was in control of the separatist forces fighting in eastern Ukraine at the time.

MH17 was Malaysia Airlines' second aircraft loss during 2014, after the disappearance of Flight 370 four months prior on 8 March. It is also the deadliest aircraft shoot-down incident to date.

----------ooOoo----------