Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, a massive chunk of a heavy and unstable metal was made to hold more atoms than it was physically able to, and with the energy left over, the fabric of space itself ignited and glowed—for only an instant. For that brief moment, however, it became as hot as the surface of the sun in Hiroshima, until then a rather ordinary workaday city in wartime Japan. Half the city was leveled by the resulting blast, and the rest was set ablaze. Rain impregnated with radioactive fallout then fell, killing many that the fire and 1,000-mph shock wave had not. By the end of this mind-boggling disaster, more than 140,000 people died.

In modern Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, the monuments to that day abound, but only one original site bears witness to that enormous release of atomic energy 60 years ago: the A-Bomb Dome. Its gloomy shadows are now surrounded by a vibrant, entirely rebuilt city. As if to show just how earnestly Hiroshima has redefined itself, only a short walk to the east lies Nagarekawa-cho, the city's raucous nightlife district.