Seventy-one years ago the night sky of southern New Mexico was suddenly illuminated by a blast the likes of which the world had never witnessed. In just a few microseconds, a 13.6-pound sphere of plutonium went critical, unleashing the energy of 19 kilotons of TNT.

The shockwave rippled outward at the speed of sound, blowing out windows over a hundred miles away; observers ten miles from ground zero described being bathed in an oven-like heat. Soon a mushroom cloud seven miles tall began drifting eastward with the wind. Months later, fallout would be discovered in Indiana rivers 1,300 miles away when the Kodak Company observed that their cardboard packaging was emitting radiation that fogged the pristine film it was supposed to protect. 

This was Trinity, the code-name for the culmination of the Manhattan Project...