All the News That Was Ever Fit To Print…
From Brightsolid, in cooperation with the British Library, The British Newspaper Archive…
(Alert readers will note that one of the examples proffered is a report on what became the subject of “the worst poem ever,” “The Tay River Disaster.”)
As we wash the ink from our fingers, we might recall that it was on this date in 1942 that the Atomic Age began, when a team led by Enrico Fermi, working inside an enormous tent on a squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field, achieved the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction… laying the foundation for the atomic bomb and later, nuclear power generation.
“…the Italian Navigator has just landed in the New World…”
– Coded telephone message confirming first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, December 2, 1942.
1946 reunion of the 1942 team
Back row, left to right: Norman Hilberry, Samuel Allison, Thomas Brill, Robert G. Nobles, Warren Nyer, and Marvin Wilkening.
Middle row: Harold Agnew, William Sturm, Harold Lichtenberger, Leona W. Marshall, and Leo Szilard.
Front row: Enrico Fermi, Walter H. Zinn, Albert Wattenberg, and Herbert L. Anderson
(source)