At 8:15 AM, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay released 'Little Boy' over Hiroshima, Japan, detonating with a force equivalent to about 15,000 tons of TNT. The blast leveled roughly 70% of the city's buildings and killed an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people immediately, with total deaths from injuries and radiation sickness eventually reaching over 140,000 by year's end. It remains the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.
After more than three centuries as a British colony built on sugar and slavery, Jamaica achieved full independence on August 6, 1962. Crowds gathered in Kingston's National Stadium as the Union Jack was lowered and the new black, green, and gold Jamaican flag raised. Alexander Bustamante became the country's first prime minister, inheriting a nation grappling with the legacies of plantation slavery and seeking a new identity within the Commonwealth.
