Obituary: Eva Ban, the bikini woman in photo with John F. Kennedy
But well before the internet, the 1962 photo of president John F. Kennedy at the beach in Santa Monica, California, made quite a splash. And for a Los Angeles woman named Eva Ban, its effect lasted a lifetime.
Today, the image would have gone viral - the president of the United States, dripping wet in trunks, laughing with a pretty woman in a polka-dot bikini.
But well before the internet, the 1962 photo of president John F. Kennedy at the beach in Santa Monica, California, made quite a splash. And for a Los Angeles woman named Eva Ban, its effect lasted a lifetime.
Ban was the woman in the two-piece swimsuit, which was modest by today's standards.
A few days after the photo ran in newspapers and on television broadcasts around the world, Ban revealed what she and Kennedy were laughing about.
It was a woman in the crowd clustering around the tanned, bare-chested, 45-year-old president. "Mabel," the woman yelled to a friend, "I touched him!"
Ban, who was raised in Hungary and studied classical dance, died on March 8 at a care facility in Oakland. She was 94 and had Alzheimer's disease, her daughter Agi Ban said.