It’s been more than 70 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The bombing, the first time a nuclear weapon was used in war, killed thousands and destroyed 80 percent of the city's buildings.
On Friday, President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit the city where he laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
Here are a few facts about the bomb and the effect it had on the world.
1. President Harry Truman ok'd the plan to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, and, three days later, to drop a second one on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
2. The Manhattan Project cost $2 billion. That's more than $26 billion in today's dollars.
3. The plane that carried the bomb to Hiroshima was named the "Enola Gay." That was the name of the mother of the plane's pilot, Paul Tibbets.
4. There were only three people on the Enola Gay who knew what the real mission was that day.
5. The name Hiroshima means 'wide island' in Japanese.
6. The bomb, called "Little Boy," was dropped at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945. It was a Monday. It detonated about 1,750 feet above the ground. The blast was the equivalent of 15 kilotons of TNT.
7. "Little Boy" was a uranium-based bomb that weighed more than 9,000 pounds and was some 10 feet long. The amount of uranium it took to spark the reaction was 0.7g -- an amount about the weight of a paperclip.
8. When "Little Boy" exploded, it instantly destroyed about five square miles of Hiroshima.
9. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly. Thousands more died of radiation poisoning and severe burns. The total death toll has been estimated at between 150,000 and 190,000.
10. The first thing to bloom again in Hiroshima after the blast was the oleander bush. The plant was named the city's official flower.
11. A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, three days later. It was a plutonium-based bomb. The bomb was nicknamed "Fat Boy."
12. Kyoto was initially considered the target for the second bomb, but then Secretary of War Henry Stimson had honeymooned in Kyoto and he asked President Truman to remove the city from the list of targets. Truman did.
13. The movie monster Godzilla was created as a reaction to the two bombings. The creature was supposedly born out of the atomic explosions.
Sources: History.com; the BBC; the Brookings Institute; The Associated Press
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