Trump claims U.S. "split the atom." New Zealand says that's not true.
A small town mayor in New Zealand has picked a nuclear fight with Donald Trump, after the freshly sworn-in U.S. president heaped praise on American scientists for splitting the atom.
Mr. Trump's inauguration address rattled off a list of crowning American feats such as ending slavery, launching into space, and the moment they "split the atom."
The mayor of Nelson in New Zealand's South Island seized on the subatomic slight, pointing out that work to split the atom was actually pioneered by Kiwi-born physicist Ernest Rutherford.
"I was a bit surprised by new President Donald Trump in his inauguration speech about US greatness claiming today Americans 'split the atom' when that honour belongs to Nelson's most famous and favourite son Sir Ernest Rutherford," Mayor Nick Smith wrote on social media.
Credited with splitting the nucleus of an atom during experiments at the U.K.'s Manchester University in 1917, Rutherford was "the first to artificially induce a nuclear reaction by bombarding nitrogen nuclei with alpha particles," Smith said.
