Kodak accidentally discovered the U.S. was testing the atom bomb.

When the United States government detonated the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Gadget, near Los Alamos, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, they did it in secret — or as secretly as you can test something that creates an explosion reaching 40,000 feet into the air. It was known as the Trinity Test, but as far as the public knew, an Air Force weapons stash had accidentally exploded. Soon after, Kodak started getting complaints that its X-ray film was unusable, due to mysterious exposed black spots, called “fogging,” and one research scientist’s quest to find the source of the problem led him to make a startling discovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices