Showing posts with label the atom bomb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the atom bomb. Show all posts
Monday, April 12, 2010
Truman's Very Bad Day
Franklin Roosevelt died suddenly on this day in 1945. He'd been dying for a long time, but nobody wanted to admit it. Losing him was too big a catastrophe to think about. A nondescript man in glasses was quickly sworn in to replace him, but nobody knew much about the guy. He was from somewhere in the Midwest. He wore a panama hat and liked to play the piano. Roosevelt had been president for so long it was hard to remember him not being president. Businessmen hated him, giving him little credit for rescuing the economy. The rich called FDR a traitor to his class. To the working man he was almost God. He was enormously self-confident and reassuring, and he was ubiquitous. People hung his picture in their homes and offices. Everybody knew his voice from the radio. Nobody had ever heard of Harry Truman. When Truman expressed his condolences to Mrs. Roosevelt she said she felt more sorry for him. He was the understudy who wakes up onstage. Everyone was looking at him, waiting for him to act, to say something so they'd know what he sounded like, wondering how quickly he would fail. He was sixty years-old. Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt each appear five times in A Book of Ages. Eleanor Roosevelt appears three times.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Napoleon, Brown, Ford, Fermi, McCarthy, Castro
There are some days when nothing happens, but December 2nd isn't one of them.
On this day in 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France. He was 35. France hadn't had an emperor since Charlemagne a thousand years earlier.
On December 2nd, 1859, the abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his violent attack on the military arsenal at Harper's Ferry. He was 59. If you've seen the famous painting of him, he looked a lot like God. The federal troops that captured Brown and retook the arsenal were under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee.
On this day in 1927 Henry Ford replaced the famously reliable Model T with the Model A. Ford was 64 and still innovating. The Model T had been in production for the previous 19 years and came in a variety of colors, all of them black. That was the joke, anyway.
It was on this day in 1942 that Enrico Fermi initiated the first sustained nuclear reaction, the first step toward the production of an atomic weapon. It took place in a secret laboratory under the bleachers of a university football stadium. On the same day the State Department announced the deaths of 2 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Fermi was 41, and a recent immigrant from fascist Italy.
Fifty five years ago today the Senate voted to censure Joe McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." He was 46. He was still in office when he died two years later.
On December 2nd, 1956 Castro, Ché Guevara and 80 other members of his July 26th Movement landed in Cuba to begin their revolution. On December 2nd, 1961, his revolution completed, Castro announced in a nationwide radio address that he was a Marxist. He was 35.
All of these stories, and hundreds of others, appear in A Book of Ages. Monarchs, revolutionaries, soldiers, scientists, authors, painters, inventors, demagogues, tycoons; what they did, and how old they were when they did it.
On this day in 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France. He was 35. France hadn't had an emperor since Charlemagne a thousand years earlier.
On December 2nd, 1859, the abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his violent attack on the military arsenal at Harper's Ferry. He was 59. If you've seen the famous painting of him, he looked a lot like God. The federal troops that captured Brown and retook the arsenal were under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee.
On this day in 1927 Henry Ford replaced the famously reliable Model T with the Model A. Ford was 64 and still innovating. The Model T had been in production for the previous 19 years and came in a variety of colors, all of them black. That was the joke, anyway.
It was on this day in 1942 that Enrico Fermi initiated the first sustained nuclear reaction, the first step toward the production of an atomic weapon. It took place in a secret laboratory under the bleachers of a university football stadium. On the same day the State Department announced the deaths of 2 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Fermi was 41, and a recent immigrant from fascist Italy.
Fifty five years ago today the Senate voted to censure Joe McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." He was 46. He was still in office when he died two years later.
On December 2nd, 1956 Castro, Ché Guevara and 80 other members of his July 26th Movement landed in Cuba to begin their revolution. On December 2nd, 1961, his revolution completed, Castro announced in a nationwide radio address that he was a Marxist. He was 35.
All of these stories, and hundreds of others, appear in A Book of Ages. Monarchs, revolutionaries, soldiers, scientists, authors, painters, inventors, demagogues, tycoons; what they did, and how old they were when they did it.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Shatterer of Worlds
At 5:30 A.M., Mountain War Time, on July 16, 1945 J. Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the explosion of the first atomic bomb, the creation of which he'd supervised for the previous three years. He was reminded of a line from the sacred Hindu epic, the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." He was 41. Oppenheimer appears twice in A Book of Ages.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Lenin, Oppenheimer, Nabokov
Vladimir Lenin was born on this day in 1870, and Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atom bomb was born the same day 34 years later. I imagine this coincidence was among the proofs offered when Oppenheimer was accused of being a Soviet sympathizer and spy and lost his security clearance in 1954. He was 50. It's true, he had been friends with known communists, and it was a time of witch hunts. He'd also had the audacity to express doubts about the morality of the weapon he had created. A conscience can be a dangerous thing. Oppenheimer appears on pages 157 and 191 in A Book of Ages. Lenin only appears in other people's anecdotes.
Vladimir Nabokov was born on April 22 in 1899 in Russia to an aristocratic St. Petersburg family. They fled Russia in 1919, living briefly in England, where Vladimir entered Cambridge University, then settling in Berlin. Nabokov grew up speaking three languages, Russian, English and French, and actually learned to read English before he learned to read his mother tongue, but he wrote his first nine novels in Russian. He only began writing in English when he was 42. He appears five times in A Book of Ages. My favorite anecdote is from when he was 49 and teaching at Cornell. He had an unusual method of teaching literature, having his students memorize Madame Bovary's hairstyles and the layout of the railway carriage from Anna Karenina. Also in the book are a couple of stories about his most famous novel, Lolita. Nabokov collected butterflies and had several varieties named after him. He never learned to drive a car.
Vladimir Nabokov was born on April 22 in 1899 in Russia to an aristocratic St. Petersburg family. They fled Russia in 1919, living briefly in England, where Vladimir entered Cambridge University, then settling in Berlin. Nabokov grew up speaking three languages, Russian, English and French, and actually learned to read English before he learned to read his mother tongue, but he wrote his first nine novels in Russian. He only began writing in English when he was 42. He appears five times in A Book of Ages. My favorite anecdote is from when he was 49 and teaching at Cornell. He had an unusual method of teaching literature, having his students memorize Madame Bovary's hairstyles and the layout of the railway carriage from Anna Karenina. Also in the book are a couple of stories about his most famous novel, Lolita. Nabokov collected butterflies and had several varieties named after him. He never learned to drive a car.
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