Day 980 to 1,000: The Emergency

By the time the first device was tested on July 16, 1945, President Harry Truman was in the White House. The efforts of those who worked in Los Alamos could not be said to have won the war – by the time the first bomb levelled Hiroshima on August 6, Germany had already surrendered and Japan was near to collapse – but they certainly shortened the conflict and saved thousands of American lives.