Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

The US Army Corps of Engineers Manhattan Engineer District more commonly known as the Manhattan Project was officially established on August 13, 1942 by order of Chief of Engineers Major Eugene Reybold. Just 35 months later, it would successfully test the world’s first atomic bomb.



The original name for the huge and unprecedented effort was Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Materials before Gen. Leslie Groves objected that it would draw unwanted attention to the extremely secretive project to design, test, and mass produce atomic bombs.

The story of the Manhattan Project began in 1938, when German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann inadvertently discovered nuclear fission. A few months later, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard sent a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that Germany might try to build an atomic bomb. In response, FDR formed the Uranium Committee, a group of top military and scientific experts to determine the feasibility of a nuclear chain reaction.

Nevertheless, initial research moved slowly until the spring of 1941, when the MAUD Committee (essentially the British equivalent to the Uranium Committee) issued a report affirming that an atomic bomb was possible and urging cooperation with the United States. The U.S. government responded by reorganizing its atomic research under the S-1 Committee, which was in turn under the jurisdiction of the newly created Office of Scientific Research and Development, led by Vannevar Bush. As the project progressed from research to development, however, Bush realized that the S-1 Committee did not have the resources for full-scale construction, eventually opting to turn to the Army for support.

The name itself, “Manhattan Project,” is commonly thought to be a misnomer, but its first offices were actually in Manhattan, at 270 Broadway. The atomic bomb project thus became known as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), or Manhattan Project for short.
The Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project Historiographical background


Barbed Wire Sunday (German: Stacheldrahtsonntag), is the name given to 13 August 1961, when the military and police of East Germany closed the border between East and West Berlin and began the construction of what would become the Berlin Wall. Although it claimed the Antifascistischer Schutzwall (Antifascist Rampart) was intended to keep out Western fascists.

Around 2.7 million people left the GDR and East Berlin between 1949 and 1961, causing increasing difficulties for the leadership of the East German communist party, the SED.

In the early morning hours of 13 August 1961 [Film 5.80 MB], temporary barriers were put up at the border separating the Soviet sector from West Berlin, and the asphalt and cobblestones on the connecting roads were ripped up. Police and transport police units, along with members of “workers’ militias,” stood guard and turned away all traffic at the sector boundaries. The SED leadership’s choice of a Sunday during the summer holiday season for its operation was probably no coincidence.

Over the next few days and weeks, the coils of barbed wire strung along the border to West Berlin were replaced by a wall of concrete slabs and hollow blocks. This was built by East Berlin construction workers under the close scrutiny of GDR border guards.

The construction of the Berlin Wall

Timeline Chronicle 1961






August 13, 1969: The Apollo 11 astronauts enjoy a ticker tape parade in New York City. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon.


The American Presidency Project  | LUNAR PLAQUE – NASA



The Year Men Walked on the Moon (45 photos)


When the most basic of common sense is a breaking news story, you know we are in trouble.


Leading Britain's Conversation