As we learned in this week's Word, the bikini caused a fashion explosion when Jacques Heim and Louis Réard dropped their scanty swimsuits on the world in the summer of 1946.

But "Operation Crossroads" wasn't the only U.S. Navy nuclear test conducted on the Bikini Atoll.

On March 1, 1954, the United States test-fired one of the first hydrogen bombs on the atoll in "Operation Castle." The 15-megaton explosion was 1,000 times more forceful than the bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. The h-bomb test, codenamed "Castle Bravo," was indeed far larger than anticipated, annihilating scientific instruments and accidentally irradiating hundreds of military personnel, along with the crew of a Japanese fishing vessel, the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (the ironically named Lucky Dragon No. 5), and its crew of 23.

"Castle Bravo" was, in fact, one of the largest American nuclear tests ever, creating a crater some 6,510 feet in diameter, 250 feet deep, and with a cloud that ballooned to 130,000 feet within eight minutes (the above photo is from the test; for video, go here).

From 1946 to 1958, the 23 nuclear tests took place on the atoll, and while the swimsuit's history may be fun, the atoll it's named after has had a rougher time of it.

For years, the atoll's inhabitants led a nomadic existence, having been relocated from their island home to other islands scattered across the western Pacific; the original inhabitants were eventually allowed to return in 1974 and were each awarded some $325,000 in compensation. But they had to leave again four years later after tests indicated that the soil was still too contaminated by radiation to make long-term resettlement possible.

As important as it was to carry out those nuclear tests, the atoll -- and thus the people -- paid a steep price.

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