A two piece garment invented by a French lingerie salesman, namesake of people evacuated for scandalous and dangerous atomic testing.
- An Atoll is "a coral island or series of coral islands forming a ring that nearly or entirely encloses a shallow lagoon. Atolls are surrounded by deep ocean water and range in diameter from about 1 km (0.62 mi) to over 100 km (62 mi). They are especially common in the western and central Pacific Ocean and are believed to form along the fringes of underwater volcanoes".
- "Bikini Atoll is one of the 29 atolls and five islands that compose the Marshall Islands". "In February of 1946 the Bikinians were asked to leave their atoll so that the United States could test atomic bombs there."
Source: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Bikini1.gif
- Bikini Atoll (also known as Pikinni Atoll) consists of 23 islands surrounding a deep 229.4-square-mile (594.1 km2) central lagoon. After the displacement of the local inhabitants, 67 nuclear tests were carried out from 1946 to 1958, including the explosion of the first H-bomb (1952).
- Twenty-three nuclear devices were detonated on Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958 with a combined fission yield of 42.2 Megaton (Mt).
- On the morning of March 1, 1954, a hydrogen bomb, code named Castle Bravo, was detonated in the northwestern corner of Bikini Atoll. There was a flash of blinding light and a fireball moved to the sky at a rate of 300 miles an hour. The blast sent millions of tons of sand, coral, plant and sea life into the air. Three to four hours after the blast, atomic ash began to rain down on the people on the Rongelap Atoll and the Ailinginae Atoll which were about 125 miles east of Bikini. The Castle Bravo Nuclear Bomb Crater, the result of the largest nuclear explosion detonated by the United States, is clearly visible in the photo below.
Source: http://www.bikiniatoll.com/
The bikini became popular in the 1960s a symbol of physical liberation of women. In 2010, however, wearing a bikini is associated with anxiety, gruelling diet rituals and joyless physical exercise regimes—it became yet another set of rules for self-control. Read "The bomb-blast garment"—Download Bikini article by Laurie Penny, which was published in the Guardian as "Bikini Body, Anyone?"