Mid-century sex symbol provides inspiration for nuclear erotica. This unusual piece of art was made by a French artist named Jacques Puiseux, whose work we've shared here before. We happened to be in contact with him recently, and he sent this our way to enjoy. He painted it back in 1999, and it suggests Brigitte Bardot and the French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, combined to create “a graphic pun of a sex bomb.” Appropriately, he calls it “Vénus Atomica.” We dig it, and Jacques' other art too, which you can see by clicking his keywords below. Just a little something different for you this lovely Thursday. Also, Jacques has a Flickr gallery here.
Last star you see in your life.
This photo shows the French nuclear test codenamed Aldébaran, after an orange giant star in the constellation Taurus. If the photo were in color, the light from the explosion would indeed be orange at this stage, but we actually prefer this black and white shot. It was France's first nuclear test, to be followed by 209 more, including 50 in the open atmosphere. Most took place on on Mururoa Atoll, leading to rampant radioactivity which the French government managed to keep secret until just a few years ago. Aldébaran was detonated today in 1966.
It doesn't look like much now but wait until it spreads its wings.
This image shows the first instant of the French nuclear test Pégase, which took place at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia today in 1970. Pégase is of course French for Pegasus, but this particular aerial phenomenon isn't something you ride through the sky to perform acts of heroism. The protrusions at the bottom of the plasma ball are wires used to stabilize the testing tower vaporizing, a phenomenon you can see in better detail here and here. You can also see a typical testing tower with wires intact here.
Mass destruction as a party balloon. Above is a photo of the French nuclear test codenamed Tamouré, a 50 kiloton airdrop at Mururoa Atoll, Pacific Test Area, French Polynesia. It was the first time the French dropped a nuclear device from an airplane. The photo has the same weird ass green color as the Betelgeuse test we showed you a few years ago, but we don’t know why that is. Exposure time? Film stock? French photog getting all artistic trying make the horrifying reality of the shot a bit more cheerful? We don’t know. But the image was made this week in 1966.
Old nuclear tests threaten to become current event. Above, a photo of the French nuclear test Phoebe, conducted at Mururoa Atoll, yesterday 1971. Mururoa was the site of 193 nuclear tests and today is geologically unstable and in danger of collapsing into the sea. If that happens it would release dangerous levels of radioactivity into the Pacific currents.
What’s another nuclear bomb, more or less? This nuclear test, which was codenamed Dione, was a 34-kiloton blast conducted by France in the South Pacific at Mururoa Atoll, which along with its sister atoll Fangataufa was the site of nearly two hundred atomic detonations. The bomb was named after one of the thousands of Océanides, who in Greek mythology were aquatic nymphs born of their father Ocean and their mother the sea goddess Tethys. We only mention all that because we love how the French can poeticize even the worst thing ever created by humanity. Anyway, the test was today in 1971, and if that seems late for an aboveground test, it wasn’t—France exploded its last nuclear bomb on Mururoa in 1996.
Doing it the French way. Above, an eerie shot of the French nuclear test Betelgeuse, one of more than two-hundred tests conducted by France over the course of thirty-six years. This one is from 1966, and took place on September 11, but we posted it today rather than in September because it’s incorrectly listed on many websites as occurring today. The location is French Polynesia and the event was strongly protested by the potentially downwind nations of New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, but those complaints were ignored. This exposure was made near the instant of detonation, and the brightly lit protrusions are stabilizing wires attached to the bomb platform vaporizing. You can see a better example of the same phenomenon here.
This world, then the fireworks. French nuclear test Licorne, Mururoa Atoll, French Polynesia, July 3, 1970. Note: this explosion in its many stages appears all over the internet misidentified as the Canopus blast from August 1968. However these photos are from Atolls de l'atome, a definitive book about French nuclear testing in the Pacific, and are there identified by author Bernard Dumortier as Licorne.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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