Word: flash
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...first atomic bomb had been dropped. A few seconds after the flash, the shock wave from the blast reached the Enola Gay, several miles away, and rocked it like a giant burst of flak. From the men who had rung up the curtain on a new era in history burst nothing more original than an awed...
...corporal, attached to headquarters of the Central Army District, was in a hotel and put his head out the window when he heard the drone of engines overhead. "I looked up," he said in a Tokyo radio interview, "and simultaneously a lightning-like flash covered the whole sky, blinding my eyes. Unconsciously, I dived for cover and a torn quilt miraculously was blown over me, which I hugged to myself for dear life...
...discovered that slow-moving neutrons could split the atoms of the uranium isotope, U-235, giving a mighty gush of energy. Besides energy, their "fission" produced more flying neutrons. If enough of these in turn split uranium atoms, the reaction would maintain itself, gain momentum. It would flash through all the uranium, like the flame of a match through excelsior...
...minutes later the same machines stuttered: EDITORS, HOLD UP THAT FLASH. But the damage had been done...
...newspaper hit the streets with the phony flash. But radio had destroyed the few minutes' leeway that wire associations once had to retrieve their errors. So long as scoop-happy radio stations shot from the hip, wire services had to be triply careful what crossed their wires...