July 16 Birthday
On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 AM, the first atomic bomb was detonated at the Trinity test site in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico. The explosion was equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. The fireball was 600 feet wide. The shock wave was felt 100 miles away. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, recalled a line from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Three weeks later, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The test site is now a National Historic Landmark. The sand at ground zero was fused into a green glass called trinitite. Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969, from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins rode a Saturn V rocket — 363 feet tall, generating 7.5 million pounds of thrust. The rocket burned 20 tons of fuel per second at liftoff. Collins would remain in orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the surface. Collins wrote: "I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life.". People born on July 16 fall under the zodiac sign of Cancer. The birthstone is Ruby and the birth flower is Larkspur. Historical events on July 16 include 1945: Trinity test — first atomic bomb detonated in New Mexico desert, 1969: Apollo 11 launches from Kennedy Space Center, 1999: John F. Kennedy Jr. killed in plane crash off Martha's Vineyard. Famous people born on July 16 include Barbara Stanwyck (1907), Ginger Rogers (1911), Stewart Copeland (1952).