In 1 month, the bikini will turn 69 years old.

On July 5, 1946, Louis Reard introduced the design into modern western civilization. He was an automobile engineer who had taken over his mother's lingerie business in Paris.

The idea to create a two-piece bikini came to him when he saw women on the beaches of St. Tropez rolling up their swimsuits to get a better tan.

It takes the name from the Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific Ocean where the US had conducted its first nuclear weapons testing on July 1, 1946.

Reard introduced his garment exactly four days later -- on July 5 -- and named it in the hope that it would create an 'explosive commercial and cultural reaction', not unlike the explosion at Bikini Atoll.

Since he couldn't find a model to sport it before the cameras, Reard simply hired a nude dancer who happily presented it for him.

That is the lady in the picture -- Micheline Bernardini.

Reard claimed that the bikini was so small it could fit into a two-by-two inches large box that the model is holding in the photograph.

Women athletes wearing bikini-like garments have been depicted in paintings dating back to 1400 BC

This one is from Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily is one of the earliest discovered illustrations of the garment.

When the Vatican called it sinful, the bikini was banned in several countries including Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium and Australia.

It was also prohibited in several American states.

Happy Bikini Season, Northern Hemisphere!

Source of this post and Imgur comments: http://imgur.com/gallery/YFlnA

More: http://imgur.com/r/bikini and http://reddit.com/r/bikini