World War Two, A Very Peculiar History by Jim Pipe

Author:Jim Pipe
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: gift, information, facts, trivia, quirky, stories, hitler, soldier, churchill, axis, allies, tank, bomb, d-day, blitz, england, germany, atomic, death, sacrifice
ISBN: 9781908759795
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

Kilroy was here

During World War Two a curious cartoon cropped up all over the world at truck stops, restaurants and military barracks. Accompanied by the phrase ‘Kilroy was here’, it showed a curious little man with a bald head peering over a fence that hid everything except his eyes and his long nose.

It was found on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Marco Polo Bridge in China. US Air Force crews competed to beat Kilroy to isolated places around the world.

According to one legend, during the meeting of the Big Three war leaders in Potsdam, Germany, in July 1945, US president Harry S. Truman, British prime minister Clement Attlee and Stalin shared a luxurious marble bathroom. During the summit an excited Stalin appeared from the bathroom muttering in Russian to one of his staff. A translator overheard Stalin ask: ‘Who is Kilroy?’

The most likely origin of the phrase is James J. Kilroy, a welding inspector at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, who marked his welding work with the words ‘Kilroy was here.’ This became a common sight around the shipyard, so the story goes, and was imitated by other shipyard workers sent around the world.

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