December 2 · This Day in America
Under the abandoned grandstands of Stagg Field in Chicago, in a converted squash court, forty-nine people stand around a black lattice of graphite and uranium and wait. Enrico Fermi has built a pile he believes can split atoms in a controlled, self-feeding chain. No one has done this before. If the math is wrong, the consequences are unknown. At 3:25 in the afternoon the last control rod is drawn out by inches; the neutron counters climb from a clatter to a roar to a steady tone, and Fermi lets it run for four and a half minutes before he shuts it down. Wigner produces a bottle of Chianti. They drink from paper cups, in silence, and sign the straw wrapper. A coded call goes east: the Italian navigator has landed in the new world. The natives were friendly. The atomic age has begun, and it cannot be un-begun.
Source: news.uchicago.edu
Also on this day · 1859
Convicted of treason for his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, the abolitionist John Brown rides to the gallows on his own coffin. He hands a guard a last note: he is now quite certain the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. In the watching crowd of soldiers stands a young actor named John Wilkes Booth. In sixteen months the war Brown predicted will come.
Source: www.loc.gov
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”John Brown, final written words, 1859