Beginning A New Century
The Atomic Bomb was coming into development right around the time that the century itself was making a turn from the 1890s into the 1900s: The 20th Century. In this time physicists and engineers began to experiment with the splitting of the nucleus of an atom of a heavy element. This new development would mean weapons for countries and devastation.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb."