1945 First atomic bomb test

70 years ago, on July 16, 1945, the first successful test of an atomic bomb took place at the Alamogordo test site in the US state of New Mexico. This marked the beginning of the nuclear age.

As the only journalist admitted to the test, The New York Times correspondent William Lawrence, wrote, "It was a sunrise like the world has never seen before: a huge green super-sun that rose to a height of more than three kilometers in a fraction of a second and continued to rise all higher, until it touched the clouds, with amazing brightness lit up the earth and sky around it.