Farrell, a Los Alamos Laboratory official, later explained to the press, ‘it is that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately.’ Yet such ordinary words failed to adequately describe the spectacle because, as Thomas F.
Spectators described the first atomic bomb blast, on 16 July 1945 at the Trinity Site in Jornada del Muerto, New Mexico, as ‘unprecedented’, ‘terrifying’, ‘magnificent’, ‘brutal’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘stupendous’.
