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Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Trinity (nuclear test)

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Trinity (nuclear test)

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This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 16, 2015 by Brianboulton (talk) 14:44, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Trinity was the code name given to the nuclear test that saw the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. The code name was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, after a poem by John Donne. It was conducted by the United States Army on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in the Jornada del Muerto desert. The only structures originally in the vicinity were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildings, which scientists used as a laboratory for testing bomb components. A base camp was constructed, and there were 425 people present on the weekend of the test. It used a Fat Man bomb of the same design as that detonated over Nagasaki. The complex Implosion-type nuclear weapon design required a major effort from the Los Alamos Laboratory, and testing was required to allay fears that it would not work. Its detonation (shown on video) produced the explosive power of about 20 kilotons of TNT (84 TJ). The test site is now part of the White Sands Missile Range. It was declared a National Historic Landmark district in 1965, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year. (Full article...)