Clothes similar to the bikini have been worn for ages. Paintings from ancient Italy show that women were wearing two-piece clothes about four thousand years ago. But the modern bikini was born in 1946, and was called the bikini for a special reason. In July 1946, the USA government announced that they would soon be testing an atom bomb at the Bikini Atoll, a small island, in the North Pacific. This was the first time the USA government announced the testing of an atom bomb, and people around the world were worried about the military exploding the most powerful bomb in history. This fears were running high.