Splitting The Atom

A complete change to what I was planning to post. I've been to a conference today connected with work, hosted by Manchester University. By coincidence the room we were in makes a nice link to several recent posts, which is making it look dangerously like Bagging Area is planned rather than the random outpourings of my befuddled mind. Between 1907 and 1919 Ernest Rutherford led a team based at Manchester University which first discovered and then split the atom (I expect QI style objections could be made to this), which follows my recent posts about Hack Green secret nuclear bunker (music from Jetstream by Pacific), Jon Savage's music in the atomic age (Fujiyama Mama by Wanda Jackson) and nuclear testing (Gang Of Four's I Found That Essence Rare, two days ago). The room is preserved (with modern facilities for conferences) with the original tiled walls, a wooden work bench, various artefacts in display cases and wooden pew seating down one side. Hopefully a Geiger counter would've stayed calm. It was interesting though to be sat in a room where one of the key discoveries of science and history took place, and is one of those hidden history places- hugely significant but unknown to most.

Rutherford's discovery led eventually to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. OMD's 1980 single Enola Gaye is the poppiest nuclear protest song I can think of, and is great in every way.

enola gay.mp3