Tube Alloys was the code name of the United Kingdom's research-and- development programme, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. A 1940 memorandum on the possibility of a nuclear weapon led to the formation early in the war of the MAUD Committee, chaired by George Thomson (pictured), which called for an all-out development effort. Due to the high costs and the potential threat from German bombers, Tube Alloys was subsumed into the Manhattan Project by the Quebec Agreement. The British contribution to the Manhattan Project was crucial, but the United States did not provide complete details to the United Kingdom. The Soviet Union gained valuable information through its atomic spies, who had infiltrated both the British and American projects. After the war, the United States terminated co-operation with the enactment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. This prompted the United Kingdom to relaunch its own project: High Explosive Research.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1860:
The Open Championship, the oldest of the four major championships in men's golf, was first played at Prestwick Golf Club in Prestwick, Scotland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Championship
1964:
Australian prime minister Robert Menzies inaugurated the artificial Lake Burley Griffin in the centre of the capital Canberra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Burley_Griffin
2000:
A fatal rail accident at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, led to the introduction of widespread speed limit reductions throughout the British rail network and eventually caused the collapse of the railway management group Railtrack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
thwart: 1. (transitive) To cause to fail; to frustrate, to prevent. 2. (transitive, obsolete) To place (something) across (another thing); to position crosswise. 3. (transitive, also figurative, obsolete) To hinder or obstruct by placing (something) in the way of; to block, to impede, to oppose. 4. (transitive, intransitive, obsolete) To move (something) across or counter to; to cross. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thwart
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force. Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief — optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man. --Arthur Miller https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller
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