At 08:15, the B-29 Enola Gay, piloted and commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets, took off from the tiny island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas, a few hundred miles north of Guam, and dropped the nuclear bomb called "Little Boy" over the central part of Hiroshima. It exploded about 600 meters (2,000 feet) above the city with a blast equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT, killing an estimated 80,000 civilians outright.

The sort of perspective missed by those americans most enraged by 9/11. Was it awful? Of course. The worst thing ever? Fucking hardly. We killed a couple hundred thousand japanese civilians over the actions of thier government. If the lines between war and terrorism ever blurred, they did there.

RE: 60 years ago today...