Bikini Atoll

On 1st July 1946 an atmoic bomb exploded above Bikini, a coral atoll in the South Pacific.

This was the first official nuclear experiment since the end of World War II. The results were less than positive for the American military who engineered the explosion. Not all of the target ships were sunk and some escaped damage altogether.

It was only 4 days later that the designer Louis Reard introduced his creation, later to be christened the bikini, to Paris on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the detonation of an atomic bomb!