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War has killed thousands and left many injured. Generations following have been disfigured as well.

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On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb 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 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."

The Manhattan Project

Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists-many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe-became concerned with nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the U.S. government began funding its own atomic weapons development program, which came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department after the U.S. entry into World War II. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with spearheading the construction of the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program, codenamed "The Manhattan Project " (for the engineering corps' Manhattan district).

Over the next several years, the program's scientists worked on producing the key materials for nuclear fission-uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239). They sent them to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer worked to turn these materials into a workable atomic bomb. Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device -a plutonium bomb-at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

No Surrender for the Japanese

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan's militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with "prompt and utter destruction" if they refused.

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed "Operation Downfall." They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided-over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists-to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb-such as James Byrnes, Truman's secretary of state-believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world.

'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' Are Dropped

Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb-known as "Little Boy"-by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.

Hiroshima's devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian. Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb's effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles.

Aftermath of the Bombing

At noon on August 15, 1945 (Japanese time), Emperor Hirohito announced his country's surrender in a radio broadcast. The news spread quickly, and "Victory in Japan" or "V-J Day" celebrations broke out across the United States and other Allied nations. The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Because of the extent of the devastation and chaos-including the fact that much of the two cities' infrastructure was wiped out-exact death tolls from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unknown. However, it's estimated roughly 70,000 to 135,000 people died in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people died in Nagasaki, both from acute exposure to the blasts and from long-term side effects of radiation.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Causes, Impact & Lives Lost

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On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, immediately killing 80,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

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we go through great lengths to make our beliefs heard...

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When you think violence and civil unrest, America could be the first or last country that comes to mind. On one hand, the U.S. is emblematic of the so-called "First World"; a beacon of peace and prosperity, a superpower, a hallmark of civilization. But America is also the very portrait of rebellion; an empire born out of revolutionary war, built on promises of emancipation, individualism and right to dissent (not to mention their historical war-making abroad). In many ways, the nation persists on this seemingly contradictory set of ideals-each citizen an empowered, self-determining individual with every right and conviction to challenge authority and fight for what's theirs, but bound by the utmost reverence for collectivity, peace, power and the rule of law.

But that's not exactly limited to the U.S. of A.-you could say most, if not all, societies struggle to maintain that balance. Perhaps it reflects some persistent tension between our individual, animalistic desires, and the rational boundaries of the greater whole. Aren't we just freakishly smart primates, using social compromise to get along with each other while we try to feed ourselves and maintain fulfilled lives? That could be what makes a riot, or any form of mass urban violence, so breathtaking-it's that same unspoken compromise and civility caving in before our very eyes.

Indeed, history has willed it so that every so often the fragile balance between civility and savagery, and the precariousness of the status quo, come to light in even the most developed nation states. Though far from a common sight in developed countries, the sudden eruption of urban violence throughout America's history might have the pessimist in you believing that peace is but a thin veneer, and a well of chaos flows just underneath waiting to erupt at the right trigger.

All faith in human ideals aside, the biggest casualties of these civil disorders are people and property; unsurprisingly, history keeps close tabs on how much was lost by these events. The monetary damage done by a riot is often revealing, so we've ranked the 10 biggest riots in America by estimated insured losses of property damage, adjusted for inflation, as reported by the U.S. organization Insurance Information Institute. In other words, the biggest American uprisings by-the-dollar.

It's worth noting however that the lessons of these events extend far beyond the bottom-line. Knowing how and why these 10 chaotic disturbances happened is equally, in fact far more important and fascinating than the sheer level of their destruction alone. One key to the prevalence of urban violence in America is certainly in the fact that almost all these events are, in some form, racially charged. The history of 20 th century American rioting is in many ways the history of a civilization trying to come to terms with its own changes and practices, as oppressed groups struggle for fairer treatment under the law. In that sense, these are the 10 biggest events of what some economists might call "creative destruction", where death and tragedy sewed the seeds of progress for American civil society:

10 1968 Holy Week Uprising, New York City: $26 million

The peaceful preacher's mysterious assassination occurred just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968; New York City promptly deployed five thousand cops and firemen by nightfall as outrage and violence exploded across more than 100 U.S. cities. For various reasons, the Big Apple managed to avoid the worst of it, with insured damage estimates of $26 million from mob vandalism, looting and arson over the following days. Unlike the remaining entries on this list, the event recorded no deaths.

9 1968 Holy Week Uprising, Chicago: $86 million

8 1968 Holy Week Uprising, Baltimore: $92 million

7 Newark Riots, 1967: $103 million

6 New York City Blackout of 1977: $106 million

5 1968 Holy Week Uprising-Washington, D.C.: $158 million

The pain felt by the death of peaceful visionary Martin Luther King Jr. culminated in violence here, with 1,200 buildings burned, twelve dead, over 1,000 injured, 6,000 arrested, and some $158 million in insured property damage by the time order returned Sunday.

4 Miami Riots, 1980: $181 million

What began as a high-speed traffic pursuit for one black man turned into a massive cry of public injustice in downtown Miami in May of 1980, and a gruesome three-mile-wide, three-day-long riot complete with arson, thefts, looting and even reports of sniper fire. Some 3,500 of the National Guard were called in to help enforce the city's barricaded areas and 8 p.m. curfew, before the random violence finally began subsiding.

Years later, the victim McDuffie's family received a $1.1 million settlement from Miami's Dade County; a small measure recompense against an injustice costing 18 lives and $181 million in damages.

3 12th Street Riot, 1967: $289 million

A violent mob grew in the streets outside. Police struggled to mobilize in the dark morning hours as vandalism erupted, targeting nearby stores. Objects were hurled through windows; fires ignited; smoke filled the air. Police and firemen could only stand and watch as control of the city was lost. After two days, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a state of insurrection against the government and called in the troops; 8,000 National Guardsmen arrived by land, 4,700 paratroopers by air. They fought alongside the local police against an estimated 10,000 rioters, amidst 100,000 Detroit citizens choking the streets. After five days, 43 civilians died, 7,231 were arrested and insured damages totalled $289 million.

2 The Los Angeles Watts Riots, 1965: $321 million

Soon after police arrested 21 year-old Marquette Fry on a DUI suspicion, a mob began sifting through the impoverished Watts neighbourhood in South Central LA. Over the next six days, the streets of Watts transformed from a poor commerce zone to an all-out battleground with overturned vehicles, buildings crumbled and burned, and 14,000 National Guard troops armed to the teeth. The riots claimed the lives of thirty-four people over the course of the week, and $321 million in insured damages, making it the largest urban uprising of the civil rights period in America.

1 LA Riots, 1992: $1.268 billion

What made the LA Riots so violent was the level of scandal made possible by the graphic video footage of the beating, shot quietly by an onlooker. Despite claims of intoxication and aggression by officers, King is shown crawling helplessly on the ground as they whip him aggressively for an extended period of time. Media coverage of the incident exploded, and the ensuing acquittal of the police meant terrible tidings for the city.

The six-day LA riots became the most well-chronicled civil uprising in American history, and the largest and most violent since the New York Draft Riots of the mid-19 th century. 10,000 National Guard troops and nearly 2,000 local officers deployed to quell random acts of violence, destruction, robbery and mob assault, under Martial Law and a dawn-to-dusk curfew. With security concentrated in the hottest areas, civilians, most notably in Koreatown, assembled their own attack forces to defend their stores and properties; this almost tribal scene of warfare; the closest the city ever came to total anarchy. The LA riots were the peak of urban violence in America, with at least 58 dead (almost all homicides), at least 3700 buildings burned, and 11,000 arrested in the aftermath. Insured damages reached an incredible $1.268 billion.

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When you think violence and civil unrest, America could be the first or last country that comes to mind. On one hand, the U.S. is emblematic of the so-called "First World"; a beacon of peace and prosperity, a superpower, a hallmark of civilization.

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We pollute our air with deadly gases. Our freshwater supplies are being dilluted. Also our

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For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.
This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Humans are "eating away at our own life support systems" at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.

Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.

Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded "safe" levels: human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change, and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertilizer use.

Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis.

They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilization has advanced significantly.

Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100 times faster than the previous norm.

Graphic: Guardian; Source: PIK PR

Since 1950, urban populations have increased sevenfold, primary energy use has soared by a factor of five, while the amount of fertilizer used is now eight times higher. The amount of nitrogen entering the oceans has quadrupled.

All of these changes are shifting Earth into a "new state" that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

"These indicators have shot up since 1950 and there are no signs they are slowing down," said Will Steffen of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center. Steffen is the lead author on both of the studies.

"When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a massive increase in resource use and pollution," Steffen said. "It used to be confined to local and regional areas but we're now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to human activity, not natural variability."

Steffen said direct human influence upon the land was contributing to a loss in pollination and a disruption in the provision of nutrients and fresh water.

"We are clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we change the marine ecosystem by overfishing-it's a death by a thousand cuts," he said. "That direct impact upon the land is the most important factor right now, even more than climate change."

There are large variations in conditions around the world, according to the research. For example, land clearing is now concentrated in tropical areas, such as Indonesia and the Amazon, with the practice reversed in parts of Europe. But the overall picture is one of deterioration at a rapid rate.

"It's fairly safe to say that we haven't seen conditions in the past similar to ones we see today and there is strong evidence that there [are] tipping points we don't want to cross," Steffen said.

"If the Earth is going to move to a warmer state, 5 to 6 [degrees Celsius] warmer, with no ice caps, it will do so and that won't be good for large mammals like us. People say the world is robust and that's true, there will be life on Earth, but the Earth won't be robust for us.

"Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that's a belief system, it's not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37 [degrees Celsius], will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can't and that's a problem."

Steffen said the research showed the economic system was "fundamentally flawed" as it ignored critically important life support systems.

"It's clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter's generation will find it increasingly hard to survive," he said. "History has shown that civilizations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn't change. That's where we are today."

The two studies, published in and Anthropocene Review, featured the work of scientists from countries including the United States, Sweden, Germany, and India. The findings will be presented in seven seminars at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which takes place from January 21 to 25.

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We're destroying the planet in ways that are even worse than global warming

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For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters. This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.