“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including The Morning News, the Evening Journal and the Journal-Every Evening.
Aug. 6, 1945, Journal-Every Evening
U.S. drops atomic bomb on Japan
An atomic bomb, hailed as the most terrible destructive force in history and as the greatest achievement of organized science, has been loosed upon Japan.
President Truman disclosed in a White House statement at 11 a.m. today that the first use of the bomb, containing more power than 20,000 tons of TNT and producing more than 2,000 times the blast of the most powerful bomb ever dropped before, was made 16 hours earlier on Hiroshima, a Japanese army base.
The atomic bomb was developed at factories in Tennessee, Washington and New Mexico.
Mr. Truman in his announcement said that from 60,000 to 125,000 workers were employed on the project at Oak Ridge, Tenn., at Richland, Wash., and an undisclosed installation near Santa Fe, N.M. He said the work was so secret that most of the employees did not know the character of it.
The bomb is the answer, Truman said, to Japan’s refusal to surrender….
First State connection:A Delaware company had a big role in the Manhattan Project. Is it a part of ‘Oppenheimer’?
Aug. 8, 1990, The News Journal
Crisis in the Gulf: Bush sends ground troops, warplanes to Saudi Arabia
President Bush Tuesday dispatched American warplanes and ground troops to Saudi Arabia where sources said a multinational military force was being created to defend the vulnerable oil kingdom from attack by Iraq.
Capitol Hill sources said Egypt and Morocco were joining the effort, part of an accelerating international response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
While using an oil embargo in an effort to reverse the Kuwaiti invasion, allied forces hoped the unusual multinational defense of Saudi Arabia would deter Saddam’s million-man Iraqi army from storming the Saudi oil fields as well….
Officers at Dover Air Force Base were mum about any operations related to the American efforts….
Capt. Walter N. Thorp, base chief of public affairs, declined to release details of Dover’s security status or operations. But a variety of sources confirmed that Dover already dispatched a series of huge C-5 jet transports and some cargo, in a flurry that picked up noticeably Tuesday morning….
Aug. 9, 1945, Journal-Every Evening
Atomic raid on Nagasaki; results good
The world’s most destructive force – the atomic bomb – was used for the second time against Japan today, striking the important Kyushu Island city of Nagasaki with observed “good results.”
More than one bomb may have been dropped in this second attack and it might have been of a different size than the first one which destroyed 60 percent of Hiroshima….
The Japanese had time to study the devastation wrought at Hiroshima where they reported “practically every living thing” was destroyed as the world’s first might atom bomb wrecked that city of 343,000 Monday….
Aug. 9, 1974, The Morning News
Nixon resigns
President Nixon resigned last night, saying he did so to heal the wounds of Watergate and to give America a “full-time president” in Gerald R. Ford.
Nixon urged Americans to rally behind Ford, who will assume the powers of the presidency at noon today, the effective hour of Nixon’s resignation.
Nixon said he would have preferred to fight the virtually certain impeachment that awaited him in Congress, “no matter the personal agony that would have been involved.”
But he said the interests of the nation demanded that he step down, to end the diversions of the scandal that preoccupied the White House and the impeachment process that kept Congress from other duties….
It was the first time in the 185-year chain of presidents that a chief executive had resigned his office….
A presidential statement of Monday and three transcripts of presidential conversations that Nixon chose to make public precipitated his resignation.
In that statement, Nixon admitted, as the transcripts showed, that he ordered on June 23 a halt to the investigation of the burglary at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex 6 days earlier by persons in the employ of agents of Nixon’s re-election campaign. He also admitted that he had kept the evidence from both his lawyers and the House Judiciary Committee, which had recommended that the House impeach him on three general charges….
Catch up on history:Civil rights tested, first woman for Supreme Court: News Journal archives, week of July 2
Aug. 10, 1936, Journal Every Evening
U.S. Emerges with highest honors in Olympic track history; Owens wins fourth gold
BERLIN – America’s Olympians, with another men’s track and field title safely stowed away, moved hopefully along widely scattered athletic fronts today, while the Japanese marathon victor, Kitei Son, was acclaimed for the greatest distance running finish the games ever have witnessed….
Jesse Owens, including his part in the sprint relay, became the first American to collect four gold medals since 1900….
With the approval of Larry Snyder, his coach at Ohio State, Owens announced he would turn professional after completing a post-Olympic tour provided sufficient financial inducements are forthcoming….
Owens’ Olympic peak in which he cracked the Olympic 200 meters and broad jump marks, equaled the 100 meters record and paced the record-breaking 400 meter relay team, is the best all-around exhibition he has given since the 1935 Big Ten championship when he broke three world marks and equaled a fourth….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
