It was one of the greatest wartime atrocities ever perpetrated. Between 90,000 and 170,000 people died in that attack. The first time had occurred three days before, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was only the second time an atomic weapon had been used in warfare. Seventy years ago today, the United States detonated a plutonium implosion-type atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing between 40,000 and 80,000 people.
