It is common knowledge that The Manhattan Project refers to the United States government’s pursuit of the atomic bomb. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer lead the project that ended with working examples of nuclear bombs, but here are 7 Things You Don’t Know About: The Manhattan Project.

1. Copper was in short supply due to World War II needs, the Manhattan Project borrowed 15,000 tons of silver to wind into coils for use with the magnets used in the project.

2. The Los Alamos National Laboratory, the think tank of the Manhattan Project, had been a private school for teenage boys prior to the government purchasing it for use in the nuclear weapons program.

3. Much of the early research performed on The Manhattan Project was done at Columbia University.

4. In July of 1945, President Truman disclosed to “ally” Josef Stalin, the leader of Russia, that America did in fact have nuclear weapons. Stalin wasn’t surprised, he had already learned this information through successful espionage efforts.

5. In August of 1945, President Harry S. Truman ordered the world’s first nuclear bomb attack on Hiroshima, Japan. A little over four months earlier he had been unaware of the Manhattan Project’s existence and what it was developing. As Vice-President, Truman was out of the loop and was not briefed on the Project’s existence until President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away in April of that year and Truman assumed the Presidency.

6. The farming communities of Hanford and White Bluffs, Washington were evacuated and taken over by the Hanford Site which produced weapons grade plutonium. These communities would never be inhabited again.

7. The Quebec Agreement was the name given to the treaty that allowed the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada to jointly pursue the nuclear bomb.

The Manhattan Project will forever remain one of the more controversial programs ever undertaken by the American government, or any other government for that matter. It truly is one of the most fascinating instances in history though.