Misquotation: ‘I am become Death, the destroyer of…

On 16 July 1945, the first atomic bomb was exploded near Alamagordo, New Mexico. The American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the laboratory at Los Alamos where it had been built, who witnessed it, said later: ‘I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita… “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”’

Oppenheimer was in fact slightly misquoting the epic Hindu poem. In the dialogue between the Kshatriya prince Arjuna and his divine charioteer Krishna, the god says:

I am all-powerful Time which destroys all things, and I have come here to slay these men. Even if thou doest not fight, all the warriors facing thee shall die.

From Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Image credit: Trinity atmospheric nuclear test – July 1945, The Official CTBTO Photostream, via Wikimedia Commons