“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”—J. Robert Oppenheimer, paraphrasing the Bhagavad Gita after witnessing the Trinity test.

The U.S. Army detonated “The Gadget,” its first nuclear weapon, at White Sands, New Mexico, on this date in 1945. (Photo above.) The director of Los Alamos Laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer, gave the project the code name “Trinity,” in what he thought an appropriate literary reference to a line from John Donne: “Batter my heart, three person’d God.”
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The first tweet was sent out on March 21, 2006, by one of the founders of Twitter (which they were spelling “twttr”), Jack Dorsey:

just setting up my twttr

— Jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

The company opened to the public a few months later, on July 15, 2006, 10 years ago today.

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Six years ago today my life changed. I’m glad for that. (Photo above.)
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Today is Bastille Day in France, the commemoration of the end of monarchy and feudalism that the storming of the Bastille heralded on July 14, 1789, and the Fête de la Fédération celebrations that marked the one-year anniversary in 1790, celebrations that helped modern France realize that the French Revolution was indeed leading to a new nation. It became an official national holiday in France in 1880.

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Harry Dean Stanton is 90 today. He is still working. The opening shots from Paris, Texas:
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