The first nuclear explosion

Trinity Site, Jornada del Muerto · Socorro County, New Mexico, United States · 1945-07-16

At 5:29 a.m. on 16 July 1945 the first nuclear weapon was detonated on a hundred-foot tower in the Jornada del Muerto desert, three weeks before Hiroshima. The fireball fused the desert sand into a green glass later named trinitite, and the light was seen three states away. Ground zero is marked by a lava-stone obelisk on the White Sands Missile Range, open to visitors twice a year.

The record

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

• Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
• The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
• Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
• National and municipal archives of United States, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Films are matched to this event editorially or by search; if one is wrong, tell us and we will replace it.