The Clinton Engineer Works was the site of the Manhattan Project's World
War II production facilities that provided the enriched uranium used in
the bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. Its X-10 Graphite Reactor
produced the first samples of plutonium from a reactor. Located just
south of the town of Clinton, Tennessee, it included the production
facilities of the K-25, Y-12 and S-50 projects, various utilities, and
the township of Oak Ridge. The Manhattan District Engineer, Kenneth
Nichols, moved the Manhattan District headquarters there from Manhattan
in August 1943. Many construction workers were housed in large temporary
communities, including Happy Valley. The construction labor force peaked
at 75,000. Oak Ridge was established to house the operating staff, which
peaked at 50,000 workers just after the war. It was developed by the
federal government as a segregated community; black residents lived in
an area known as Gamble Valley, in government-built hutments of one-room
shacks.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Engineer_Works>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1066:
Harold Godwinson, widely regarded as the last Anglo-Saxon king
before the Norman conquest, was crowned King of England.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Godwinson>
1449:
The last Byzantine-Roman Emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos,
was crowned, four years before the Fall of Constantinople.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_XI_Palaiologos>
1907:
Italian educator Maria Montessori opened her first school and
day-care centre for working-class children in Rome, employing the
philosophy of education that now bears her name.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori>
1953:
The first Asian Socialist Conference, an organisation of
socialist political parties in Asia, opened in Rangoon, Burma, with 177
delegates, observers and fraternal guests.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Socialist_Conference>
1977:
The record label EMI ended its contract with the English punk
rock band Sex Pistols in response to its members' disruptive behaviour
at Heathrow Airport two days earlier.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Pistols>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
Twelfthtide:
(archaic or obsolete) The season including Epiphany (the twelfth day
after Christmas) and the evening of the preceding day (Twelfth Night),
regarded as the end of the Christmas season; Epiphany itself.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Twelfthtide>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
My aim is not the establishment of an anarchist society or the
total destruction of the state. Here I differ from anarchists. I do not
believe that it is possible to destroy the modern state. It is pure
imagination to think that some day this power will be overthrown. From a
pragmatic standpoint there is no chance of success. Furthermore, I do
not believe that anarchist doctrine is the solution to the problem of
organization in society and government. I do not think that if anarchism
were to succeed we should have a better or more livable society. Hence I
am not fighting for the triumph of this doctrine. On the other hand, it
seems to me that an anarchist attitude is the only one that is
sufficiently radical in the face of a general statist system.
--Jacques Ellul
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul>