The summer of 1946 saw a lot of shocking scenes. There were the atomic bomb tests that tore up the waters off the Marshall Islands, leaving parts of the region more radioactive than Chernobyl. There were the bombs themselves, great hunks of metal that would demonstrate, for the first time, what this horrific technology could do to warships. And then there was the bikini. How could we forget the bikini?

Yes, that skimpy swimsuit’s name all began with atomic bombs. Maybe it’s fitting that the clothing that’s contributed to the planet being in a toxic chokehold of “bikini-body-ready” diet culture should have such destructive origins.

The design was the product of French engineer Louis Réard’s imagination, a new take on the two-piece that sent shockwaves of scandal rippling across the globe. According to Smithsonian, the “four triangles of nothing” even reached the eyes of the Vatican who “formally decreed the design sinful”.

When the design was debuted at a beauty pageant on July 5, 1946, the name “Bikini” first went public as a hat-tip to the atoll where the United States begun Operation Crossroads days before. It involved a pair of nuclear weapon tests, the first since Trinity that shook the world a year earlier. 

The key aim of Operation Crossroads was to establish the effect of these weapons on warships, so a fleet of condemned vessels were gathered in the Marshall Islands, specifically at the Bikini Atoll. It was a region that would take a hard hit, eventually being on the receiving end of 23 nuclear warhead tests over a period between 1946 and 1958.

The nuclear arms race had been won to devastating effect, but a new race was on. Three weeks prior to the roll out of the modern bikini, another French designer called Jacques Heim had gifted the planet “the world’s smallest bathing suit”. It was called the Atome, and it would soon be blown out of the water by the scantily-clad-ness of the bikini that was the first design to put bellybuttons out there for all to see. The test for a true bikini? To be able to pull all the fabric through the loop of a wedding ring.

It just goes to show that the human creativity knows no bounds. From bombs that can level entire cities, to a swimsuit the size of your finger, we’ve proven time and time again that we love to ask if we can do something, even if we never question whether we should.