As every schoolboy has learned in history class, the day after the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, their wives all donned the first bikinis — made by Betsy Ross — and hit the beach to celebrate. Thus was born our most sacred U.S. holiday, National Bikini Day.
Actually it was on this day in 1946 that Parisian engineer Louis Réard invented the bikini — naming after the Bikini Atoll, where the U.S. was testing the Atom Bomb. The bikini was also in a sort of arms race, as French fashion designer Jacques Heim was also working feverishly to be the first to debut two-piece swim technology, only he called his the Atome (this is all true).