One day in 1907, the Australian actress and star swimmer Annette Kellerman ("The Diving Venus") appeared on a Boston beach in a newly designed form-fitting skirtless one-piece jersey bathing suit with sleeves shortened almost to the shoulders and legs ending just above her knees -- and was promptly arrested for indecent exposure.

[Aub Laidlaw -- the fanatical chief inspector on Australia's famous Bondi Beach -- often carried a ruler to ensure that the sides of women's bikinis conformed to the regulation 4" minimum. In 1961, he arrested a group of men for wearing a controversial new bathing suit -- the Speedo.]

[Among the slang terms for Speedos? "Grape smugglers," "dickstickers," "bumsuckers," and "banana hammocks."]