Good morning.
It’s a beautiful Friday for Whitewater: sunny, a high of eighty-three, and light winds of 5 to 10 mph. Sunrise was 5:23 AM, and sunset will be at 8:36 PM. The moon is a waning crescent with just 6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Independence Day events continue today at Noon. The carnival will open then, and the festival opens at 5. Live music begins at 6. There will be fireworks tonight about an hour after sunset, at 10.
Almost seventy years ago today, a fashion innovation:
On July 5, 1946, French designer Louis Reard unveils a daring two-piece swimsuit at the Piscine Molitor, a popular swimming pool in Paris. Parisian showgirl Micheline Bernardini modeled the new fashion, which Reard dubbed “bikini,” inspired by a news-making U.S. atomic test that took place off the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean earlier that week.
European women first began wearing two-piece bathing suits that consisted of a halter top and shorts in the 1930s, but only a sliver of the midriff was revealed and the navel was vigilantly covered. In the United States, the modest two-piece made its appearance during World War II, when wartime rationing of fabric saw the removal of the skirt panel and other superfluous material. Meanwhile, in Europe, fortified coastlines and Allied invasions curtailed beach life during the war, and swimsuit development, like everything else non-military, came to a standstill.
Puzzability‘s current series, concluding today, is called Key Words:
Key Words
We’ve got a parade of patriotic trivia this Independence Day week. The answer to each day’s question is a name or title that contains one of the main words in the well-known first verse of our national anthem.
Example:
What super-sweet cereal is Calvin’s favorite in “Calvin and Hobbes”?
Answer:
Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs
Here’s the puzzle for Friday:
What alternative rock duo originally presented themselves as brother and sister when they were, in fact, married for several years?
Here’s a link to the lyrics for the first verse of the Star-Spangled Banner.