Oppenheimer, Los Alamos & the Atomic Bomb

In September of 1942, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves was appointed director of what became the Manhattan Project. He tapped J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the secret weapons laboratory, which was established at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Despite the Nazis’ four-year head start, Oppenheimer and his team beat the Germans to the finish line. The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the world's first nuclear explosion, at a site codenamed “Trinity,” near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Less than a month later, two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered, ending the Second World War. This is a U.S. one cent issued in 1945.