The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) was a nuclear production complex in Benton County in the US state of Washington, established in early 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. Plutonium manufactured at the HEW was used in the atomic bomb detonated in the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, and the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. DuPont was the prime contractor for its design, construction and operation. The land acquisition was one of the largest in US history. The construction workforce reached a peak of nearly 45,000 in June 1944. B Reactor, the world's first full-scale plutonium production nuclear reactor, went critical in September 1944, followed by D and F Reactors in December 1944 and February 1945, respectively. The HEW suffered an outage on 10 March 1945 due to a Japanese balloon bomb. The total cost of the HEW up to December 1946 was more than $348 million (equivalent to $4.1 billion in 2023).

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Engineer_Works

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1782:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail premiered in Vienna, after which Emperor Joseph II anecdotally remarked that it had "too many notes". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Entf%C3%BChrung_aus_dem_Serail

1950:

Korean War: A Korean People's Army unit massacred 31 prisoners of war of the U.S. Army on a mountain near the village of Tuman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain%E2%80%93Medic_massacre

1994:

Fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 began colliding with the planet Jupiter (impact site pictured), with the first impact causing a fireball that reached a peak temperature of 24,000 kelvin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9

2004:

Millennium Park, a public park in Chicago, Illinois, and one of the world's largest rooftop gardens, opened to the public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Park

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

Zeligesque: Of a person: appearing at a surprisingly wide variety of historic events and/or with a diverse group of historic figures. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zeligesque

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

We are to be needed, but I'm not sure for what.   --Sheri S. Tepper https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper