Thirteen-year-old Barbara Kent (centre) and her fellow campers play in a river near Ruidoso, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, in the hours after the bomb’s detonation. Fallout flakes drifted down that day and for days afterward. ‘We thought [it] was snow,’ Kent says. ‘But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot.’ In the summer of 1945, as the world teetered on the edge of monumental change, a small dance camp in the desert near Ruidoso, New Mexico, was unk

In September 1859, a bankrupt San Francisco businessman walked into the offices of a local newspaper and handed over a notice declaring himself Emperor of the United States. Most cities would have laughed him off the premises or had him committed. San Francisco printed the notice, and then kept humouring him for the next 21 years, right up until his funeral drew a bigger crowd than most sitting politicians could hope for. Quick Answers Who was Emperor Norton? Joshua Abraham N

The story of Ruairí McSorley, the frostbit lad from Northern Ireland