The world's first nuclear weapons explosion on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico, when the United States tested its first nuclear bomb. Not three weeks later, the world changed.

When was the first time a nuclear weapon was used?

On July 16, 1945, in the desert north of Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first nuclear test took place, code-named "Trinity", using a device nicknamed "the gadget." The test, a plutonium implosion-type device, released energy equivalent to 22 kilotons of TNT, far more powerful than any weapon ever used before.

Who invented nuclear weapons?

J. Robert Oppenheimer is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II.