Born on this date: the survivor of Hiroshima AND Nagasaki

On this date (March 16th) 1916, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was born. He is known for being the only person to survive both the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima as well as the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. Although at least 70 people are known to have been affected by both bombings, he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.

Yamaguchi, a resident of Nagasaki, was in Hiroshima on business for his employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the city was bombed at 8:15 am, on August 6, 1945. He returned to Nagasaki the following day, and despite his wounds, he returned to work on August 9, the day of the second atomic bombing. That morning, while being berated by his supervisor as "crazy" after describing how one bomb had destroyed the city, the Nagasaki bomb detonated. In 1957, he was recognized as a hibakusha (explosion-affected person) of the Nagasaki bombing, but it was not until March 24, 2009, that the government of Japan officially recognized his presence in Hiroshima three days earlier.

Yamaguchi died of stomach cancer that was unrelated to the bombings, on January 4, 2010, at the age of 93.