(Friday, June 1, 1945, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m./1:45 p.m.-3:30 p.m. EWT; during World War II) — The Interim Committee met again secretly today at the Pentagon, formally deciding that the atomic bomb “should be used against Japan as soon as possible; that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers’ homes; and that it be used without prior warning.”
Video: 'Peter Jennings - Hiroshima: Why the Bomb was Dropped (1995)' (June 1, 1945, 41:05)
Member James F. Byrnes then went to the White House and briefed President Harry S. Truman of the decision (click here for a clip of this event from “American Experience: Truman” at 1:46:11).
(Tuesday, June 1, 1915) — The T.S. Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was first published today in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in Chicago, heralding a paradigmatic cultural shift from late 19th-century Romantic verse and Georgian lyrics to Modernism.
(Tuesday, May 31, 2005) — Breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward today as “Deep Throat,” the secret Washington Post source during the Watergate scandal.
Video: 'Peter Jennings - Hiroshima: Why the Bomb was Dropped (1995)' (May 31, 1945, 32:09/39:27)
(Thursday, May 31, 1945, 10:00 a.m.-1:15 p.m./2:15 p.m.-4:15 p.m. EWT; during World War II) — The Interim Committee, created by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson at the urging of leaders of the Manhattan Project (a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs), met secretly today at the Pentagon to consider the idea of giving the Japanese a non-combat demonstration of the new weapon of mass destruction.