| 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' Are Dropped On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets) dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb-known as "Little Boy"-over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb." Learn more and check out these titles |
