1. The modern bikini was invented by French engineer Louis Réard in 1946. He named it after Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, the site of the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon test on July 1, 1946. The reasoning was that the burst of excitement created by it would be like a nuclear device. Réard could not find a model to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris.
Bikini Island is well-known for being the subject of nuclear bomb tests, and because the bikini swimsuit was named after the island in 1946. The two-piece swimsuit was introduced within days of the first nuclear test on the atoll, and the name of the island was in the news. Introduced just weeks after the one-piece "Atome" was widely advertised as the "smallest bathing suit in the world", it was said that the bikini "split the atome".
Click for larger image (quite amazing)
Between 1946 and 1958, twenty-three nuclear devices were detonated at Bikini Atoll. The March 1st, 1954 detonation codenamed Castle Bravo, was the first test of a practical hydrogen bomb. The largest nuclear explosion ever set off by the United States, it was much more powerful than predicted, and created widespread radioactive contamination.
Hired later by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal to research and report on the economic damage caused by the testing, Economist and Crisis Consultant Randall Bell writes in his book, Strategy 360, "Bravo had an explosive force equal to nearly 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs. It vaporized the test island, parts of two other islands, and left a mile-wide crater in the lagoon floor. In total, nearly 70 acres of the Bikini Atoll were vaporized by the nuclear testing."
Randall Bell also notes, "Many of the landowners and local people accompanied me back to Rongelap an Rongerik, where much of the nuclear fallout came down. John, an elderly man, stood on his former home site in Rongelap and told me that he had gotten up early to make coffee and the sun had not yet come up. Suddenly, the sky lit up like it was day. He could see the large mushroom cloud rising off the horizon from Bikini and, soon after, he felt the blast of the shock wave. Later, as the entire village gathered, they watched the radiocative gray ash fall on them, their houses and their children. John did not express any anger, only deep sorrow that his one-year-old daughter died from leukemia soon after Bravo."
Among those contaminated were the 23 crewmembers of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon 5. The ensuing scandal in Japan was enormous, and ended up inspiring the 1954 film Godzilla, in which the 1954 U.S. nuclear test awakens and mutates the monster, who then attacks Japan before finally being vanquished by Japanese ingenuity.
~
Bikini comes from Marshallese "Pik" meaning "surface" and "Ni" meaning "coconut", "Bikini" is a derivation thereof.
~
The Flag of Bikini Atoll
The Flag of Bikini Atoll, a member of the Marshall Islands, is a flag closely resembling the flag of the United States and was adopted in 1987 to remind the people and the government of United States. The flag is symbolic of the islanders' belief that a great debt is still owed to the people of Bikini because in 1954 the United States government detonated a thermonuclear bomb on the island as part of the Bravo test.
The 23 white stars in the canton of the flag represent the 23 islands of Bikini Atoll. The three black stars in the upper right represent the three islands that were disfigured in March 1954 during 15-megaton Bravo test by the United States. The two black stars in the lower right corner represent where the Bikinians live now, Kili Island, 425 miles to the south of Bikini Atoll, and Ejit Island of Majuro Atoll. These two stars are symbolically far away from Bikini's stars on the flag as the islands are in real life (both in distance and quality of life). The Marshallese language words on the bottom of the flag, "MEN OTEMJEJ REJ ILO BEIN ANIJ," reportedly represent the words spoken in 1946 by the Bikinian leader, Juda, to U.S. Commodore Ben Wyatt when the American went to Bikini to ask the islanders to give up their islands for the 'good of all mankind' for nuclear weapons testing. It translates as "Everything is in the hands of God."
WOW.
BIKINIAN ANTHEM
Written by in 1946 Lore Kessibuki (1914-1994)
No longer can I stay; it's true.
No longer can I live in peace and harmony.
No longer can I rest on my sleeping mat and pillow
Because of my island and the life I once knew there.
The thought is overwhelming
Rendering me helpless and in great despair.
My spirit leaves, drifting around and far away
Where it becomes caught in a current of immense power -
And only then do I find tranquility
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Island; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bikini_Atoll; http://www.bikiniatoll.com/anthem.html
No comments:
Post a Comment