Bikini 5 July

Imagine, if you can, a scenario where the immortal words "She’s got an itsey-bitsy, teenie-weenie yellow polka dot bikini" would have no meaning. This would be the unhappy situation if, on this day, the 5th of July, in 1946, a type of women’s bathing suit, characterised by two separate parts-one covering the breasts, the other the groin and buttocks, leaving an uncovered area between the two garments - had not been invented by engineer Louis Reard in Paris. The bikini was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the atomic bomb. Reard’s suit was a refinement of the work of Jacques Heim who, two months earlier, had introduced the "Atome" (named for its size) and advertised it as the world’s "smallest bathing suit". Reard, cunning engineer that he was, split the "atome". The Bikini was, amazingly, fairly difficult to explode into the market places of the world. Initially, Reard could not find a model that would dare to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris. The swimwear was banned from the Miss World contests and public places in the USA. Strangely though, Brigitte Bardot’s bikini in the 1957 film ‘And God Created Woman’ created a market for the swimwear and suddenly all sorts of inappropriate individuals were sporting the bikini at every turn. Back in the UK, with amazing foresight, the introduction of the National Health Service by the Labour government on this day in 1948 ensured that, if someone was foolish enough to wear a bikini in the English summer, treatment for the inevitably ensuing pneumonia was free.