Free Republic

In 1946, the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in what’s known as Operation Crossroads. A total of two bombs were detonated to test the effects nuclear blasts had on naval warships. The second, named Baker, was the world’s first nuke to be detonated underwater. Due to the unique properties of underwater explosions, the Baker test produced a number of unique photographs that the world had never seen before.

A Los Alamos Story Worthy of Stephen King Ever heard of The Demon Core? It was named by Los Alamos scientists — who are generally not a superstitious lot — after it claimed multiple lives, in a series of strange and horrible accidents. Discover a legend of science... that's worthy of a horror movie. When I was reading Stephen King stories, I was constantly amazed at the things he made scary. It was like reading the legend of the monkey's paw over and over again, with increasingly weird objects. His most famous evil objects are the hotel in The Shining...

A FRENCHMAN may have officially unveiled the bikini, but it was the Gold Coast's grand dame of fashion, Paula Stafford, who made the two-piece cossie a cheeky Aussie icon. The "queen of the bikini" celebrated her 90th birthday on Thursday with a slap-up party and the launch of her biography, Bikini: The Paula Stafford Story. French engineer Louis Reard is widely credited with inventing the bikini in 1946. He named it after Bikini Atoll, the site of French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. But it was Mrs Stafford who made Australian beachgoers say "ooh la la" when she launched...

Toxic Tugs - Public Poisons by J.B. Stone - 04/17/02 What do Maryland, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Johnston Atoll, and the Marshall Islands have in common? BioChemical warfare tests were conducted in all of them behind a blinding haze of Cold War secrecy. And hardly a word of warning was ever issued, before during, or afterward the test conductors, subjects, or citizens living in surrounding areas. Marine jets and Army artillery sprayed "harmless simulants" and live biological and chemical agents on unsuspecting citizens for 15 years on land and sea during Operation Deseret. The randomly selected human test rats onboard ships...