On August 14, 1945, it was announced Japan had surrendered to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. This image of a sailor planting a celebratory kiss on a white-clad woman in the middle of New York City’s Times Square was published in “Life” magazine on August 27. The photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt, did not get a chance to ask the smooching pair their names (as Eisenstaedt later said of that day: “There were thousands of people milling around…everybody was kissing each other”). In the years that followed, a number of men and several women came forward to claim they were the ones in the photos, which became symbolic of the excitement felt at the end of the war.
Life is not a Spectator Sport 