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• The Manhattan Project was a top-secret operation during World War II to develop a nuclear (atomic) weapon. The project was conducted jointly by the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

• Fast Facts

  1. Official name: Manhattan Engineer District
  2. Time Period: 1941 - 1946
  3. Started in response to Adolf Hitler's rise to power
  4. Administrative Director: Leslie Groves, United States Army
  5. Research Director: Robert Oppenheimer
  6. Achieved 3 successful detonations
  7. Three main project sites: Hanford Site; Oak Ridge, TN; Los Alamos National Laboratory
  8. Over 30 sites in total
  9. Trinity Test detonated near Alamogordo, New Mexico
  10. "Little Boy" detonated over Hiroshima, Japan
  11. "Fat Man" detonated over Nagasaki, Japan
  12. Project costs neared $2 billion U.S. dollars
  13. Nuclear weapons based on concept of Nuclear fission

• Key Dates

  1. 1934: Enrico Fermi discovers artificial radioactivity through firing neutrons at uranium atoms
  2. February, 1941: Glenn Seaborg discovers plutonium
  3. 1942: Oppenheimer holds a conference on nuclear weapon design
  4. July 15, 1946: Trinity Test
  5. August 6, 1946: "Little Boy"
  6. August 9, 1946: "Fat Man"

• Related Mahalo Pages

  Robert Oppenheimer | Leslie Groves | World War II | New Mexico | Japan | Physics | Marie Curie | Albert Einstein | Franklin D. Roosevelt | Richard Feynman

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