Thursday, July 3, 2008

[Trivia] Trivia Tessellation (Part 1) – Of Bikinis, Bombs and Hollywood Babes

A tessellation is a collection of plane figures that fills a greater figure with no overlaps and no gaps, with each of the figure comprising the larger figure capable of standing up on its own. In a way, each piece is linked to each other, forming a greater design.

Much like a tessellation, the knowledge tidbits (about the bikini, the nuclear bomb and a certain Hollywood bombshell) that I will share today are informative individually. However, you’ll appreciate them further once you know how they are linked with each other.

Let’s talk about the bikini, first. Arguably, the bikini is one of the of 20th century’s inventions that has so much cultural impact. Consider this – the scene in the very first Bond movie Dr. No (1962) where Ursula Andress (the very first Bond girl) emerged from the sea holding a sea shell and wearing a white bikini is such an iconic view that Halle Berry and David Craig paid homage to this scene in Die Another Day (2002) and Casino Royale (2006), respectively. Of course, Craig wasn’t wearing a bikini in his scene.

According to the official version, the modern bikini was invented independently by two French fashion designers: Jacques Heim and Louis Reard. Heim, a swimsuit designer, designed a two-piece suit in Cannes which he marketed as the Atome, named after the atom, for its small size. He proclaimed it “the world’s smallest bathing suit.”

Louis Reard also created his own similar, two-piece swimsuit, claimed that it was the “smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world”. He named his creation bikini, after the Bikini Atoll. It is an atoll in one of the Micronesian Islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Republic of the Marshall Islands. The bikini soon superseded the Atome as the official name of the two-piece swimsuit.

Reard’s creation was a bit scandalous at the time when it was released that he could not find a model who would dare to wear his design so. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris as his model (shown in the left).

Now, the Bikini Atoll from which the bikini got its name is the site of a nuclear weapon test called Operation Crossroads.

Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States in the summer of 1946, the same time that Reard was introducing his swimsuit creation. These nuclear tests were the fourth and fifth nuclear explosions done by the USA (the first was the Trinity test in New Mexico and the second and third were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively). Reard hoped that the bikini swimsuit was supposed to have caused the same “earth-shattering” reaction among those who viewed it as was inspired by the rising mushroom clouds of atomic bombs.

This now brings us to Hollywood bombshells. One of the bombs that were dropped during the tests was named Gilda, named after the movie in which Rita Hayworth starred. The bomb even had a picture of her attached to it, as Hayworth was one of Hollywood’s sought-after bombshells at that time. Her most famous pin-up picture was the one from LIFE magazine’s August 1941 issue (photo taken by Robert Landry, right).

It’s a small world after all, right? Speaking of a small world, the song It’s a Small World, whose theme is global peace, was written by the Sherman brothers (Richard and Robert) in response to Walt Disney’s request to write a song for his Children Of The World pavilion in the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. After the fair, the ride was transferred to Disneyland (along with three other attractions from the fair that year - Primeval World Diorama, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and the Carousel of Progress). The song plays continuously during the ride and there are many claims that this is the most performed and translated song of all time (maybe rivaled only by the songs Yesterday and You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin').


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