"The kiss, Goodbye to war"

"Kissing the War Goodbye", by Victor Jorgensen:

Buddy Andrew, who has now passed away, was also in the left side of the famous Life Magazine Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph in which Ken and Edith Shain dominate. Andrew was the person who later pointed out to Ken the photograph.
A "short guy" known to many as Eisie voiced to Ken, "Young man, go over and grab and kiss the first girl out of the subway and I will make you famous."
Ken reflected in a recent interview with Chris' Old Life Magazines, "Two nurses were coming up out of the subway hand in hand laughing. I grabbed the first one who was quite unaware and said, "Let's kiss." The woman, later to be found to be Edith Shain replied with a simple, "OH!" "She didn't know me and was astounded," relayed Mr. McNeel. "Her legs were crossed and her arms were at her side. Flashes were going off everywhere from all of the cameras. I just closed my eyes and got such a grip!"
"Later I talked to her and she said, 'I just sort of laid back and surrendered.' After we kissed her girlfriend said, 'Let's go.' We walked off in different directions and met all sorts of girls and had free drinks. I never thought about it again until I later saw the picture and said, 'That's me!'"
When asked if Mr. McNeel knew that there was a search years ago for the kissing sailor to come forward, he responded that he did know. Why then did he not come forward? "Frankly," responded Mr. McNeel, "I was embarrassed. That was not acceptable behavior and I was a member of a church group back then. It just wasn't appropriate."
The fragment above is not the beginning, nor the end of Ken McNeel's story. It is simply a small fraction of a life that began in 1923 and is not yet complete on this date in 2005.
More will be revealed as we complete our interviews.
Alfred Eisenstaedt had no idea at the time he shot the photograph of the "kiss seen around the world" that one of his main subjects was also a photographer and soon to be Hollywood celebrity.

The famous moment in history and in everyone's life was just that to Ken McNeel as well. It was only a moment.
Please join us as we continue our interviews with the real Kissing Sailor.

This famous monet was also caught by another photographer called Alfred Eisenstaedt. This was the most famous picture, because his author was part of a National and very important Magazine.

"The Kiss", de Alfred Eisenstaedt:

Even though there are real facts about his salor, many other men had indentified themselfs as "the kisser". But WHO CARES! the importance of this photograph is not the real pleople, becuase it is a representation of "happiness after war", of love: GLOBAL LOVE. Here is a descriptive essay about this famous and beautiful picture:

It was a cloudy summer day. Even though it was not a shiny sun in the sky, Time Square, with its big and imposing advertisings full of colors and sizes, was the perfect place. People showed their happy faces, smiles all over the street, anything else was not important when kissing and hugging transformed into the main environment. Running, photographers shoot their cameras, clicking their flashes like glow worms, capturing moments of joy, giving hope after sadness and war. Great city that doesn’t sleep was the place where hundreds maybe thousands of feelings and faces were mixed up and brought instants, moments that last for ever. Men with blue dresses covered in war clothes were wearing it full of pride. They’re so happy because they know that their sacrifices, their devotion has worth it and that it was not in vane. Their navy hat is white, but this color didn’t symbolize peace, but fight. A fight of millions against millions that trusted in an ideal, but they had lost the real reason for their brawl, for their battle; they had lost all real reasons of war. Great news were heard that day by hearts fool of faith and hope, this horrible and never-ending war was coming to an end.
Winning means happiness means also pride and one of these souls, just another brave man lost in the crowd feels as anybody else. His hands shivered, his feet were trembling, it was joy in his American face. He felt like kissing, after pain and death kissing means hope, it means a new beginning. He found someone; after all in that moment someone meant everyone, a person represented the rest. The minute it was just the kiss, what this sailor wanted; the greatest feeling of love invaded his soul. He found this woman, beautiful as anyone else and happy as everyone. He held her in his hands; made her lay in his arms, resting this woman for just a reason the best reason of all. An eternal kiss, their lips met, and the wind blew, the time stopped in that moment in which to strangers found themselves, just an instant for a sailor and a nurse to bring love again in war times. He apprehended her tiredly and close to him. His punches were closed and all his body was tense. He wanted her to stay with him forever just because she brought the kiss, that kiss that clear everything up, that changed things. This woman dressed in peace, glided in the crowd. White dress, white hat, white shoes she was always prepared for her job helping and healing others. She was not fighting she was doing something better. When war finished, she was full of bliss. This sailor that took her in his arms and kissed her to remind love, made her slide and fall. She couldn’t even breathe. Her body was completely arched and the position was not comfortable at all, but it was also this that made this instant so unique. She closed her eyes to feel that instant and she could remind it forever. Happiness, love, peace and hope made her tied her wrist really hard. While her body was resting without any stress, she concentrated her feelings and emotions in her fingers. Her body and his body stayed in the same position for a while, staying together as they were just one.
People were walking through the big avenue of Time Square, but suddenly they observed, this picture of love grabbed their attention making them look the way two souls met in that extremely perfect moment, in the just right time and place. This kiss, this sailor, this nurse, everything was so neat and pure that was simply caught by a click, just that. A man trapping moments, trapping hugs and kisses. But this one represent all the kisses, the smiles and the feelings of that day, that afternoon in which people said goodbye to war; with a perfect kiss. BY: CAMILA RODAS

Declaration of independence

Declaration of Independence

Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument.

The declaration of independence is consider the most important moment in United States history. It states the beginning of the nation as we know it. So, here it is, to show us the importance for the american history:

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation"

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
  He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.


• He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.


• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.


• He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.


• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.


• He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
  He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
• He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.


• He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.


• He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
  He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.


• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:


• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
  For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;
  For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
  For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
  For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
  For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;
  For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;
  For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
  For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
  

• 
  
  
  He has abdicated government here, by


• 
  
  declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
  He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
  He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
  He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
  He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
  In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Signed by: JOHN HANCOCK [President] New Hampshire JOSIAH BARTLETT, WM. WHIPPLE, MATTHEW THORNTON.Massachusetts BaySAML. ADAMS,JOHN ADAMS,ROBT. TREAT PAINE,ELBRIDGE GERRYRhode IslandSTEP. HOPKINS,WILLIAM ELLERY.ConnecticutROGER SHERMAN, SAM'EL HUNTINGTON, WM. WILLIAMS, OLIVER WOLCOTT.New YorkWM. FLOYD, PHIL. LIVINGSTON, FRANS. LEWIS, LEWIS MORRIS.New JerseyRICHD. STOCKTON, JNO. WITHERSPOON, FRAS. HOPKINSON, JOHN HART, ABRA. CLARK.PennsylvaniaROBT. MORRISBENJAMIN RUSH,BENJA. FRANKLIN,JOHN MORTON,GEO. CLYMER,JAS. SMITH,GEO. TAYLOR,JAMES WILSON,GEO. ROSS.Delaware CAESAR RODNEY, GEO. READ, THO. M'KEAN.MarylandSAMUEL CHASE,WM. PACA,THOS. STONE,CHARLES CARROLL of Carrollton.VirginiaGEORGE WYTHE,RICHARD HENRY LEE,TH. JEFFERSON,BENJA. HARRISON,THS. NELSON, JR.,FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,CARTER BRAXTON.North CarolinaWM. HOOPER,JOSEPH HEWES,JOHN PENN.South CarolinaEDWARD RUTLEDGE,THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR., ARTHUR MIDDLETON.GeorgiaBUTTON GWINNETT,LYMAN HALL,GEO. WALTON.

BATTLE OF IWO JIMA
"Rasing Flag in Iwo Jima" by: Joe Rosenthal

On February 23, 1945, during the battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines raised a flag atop Mount Suribachi. It was taken down, and a second flag was raised. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured this second flag-raising. (80-G-413998)This picture is consider one of the most important war photopraphs for the American History.

It became a symbol of the Iwo Jima war, capturing the new raising of their flag in one of the most important battles of the twenieth century. Iwo Jima was the largest armada invasion up to that time in the Pacific War. With more than 110,000 Marines in 880 Ships, the convoy of 880 US Ships sailed from Hawaii to Iwo in 40 days (February 19, 1945 – March 26, 1945). After the invasion, the Japanese army was defeated by the lack of water and food, and the inminet attack of the americans.Many history analizers thinks that the Iwo Jima war was crucial in the developing of the II World War, finding it as the trigger of later facts.

Before the rasing of this flag, the americans had already tried to put their symbol in a mount. This was the first flag, raised 5 days before. ThePhotograpghor the moment itself were not famous because it was very small for representing a big cause, and because the photographer, called Louis R. Lowery was not a professional, but a simple US seargent that took the photo for personl reasons.

Later, Joe Rosenthal, who worked for the Associeted Press, was the person that took this important picture that transformed the way the Battle of Iwo Jima was seen by the americans. After the photograph was taken, Rosenthal reproduced it, and in less taht 17 hours, the picture was already in the most important journeys of the time. Also, the picture was chosen by the president Roosevelt as the picture for the seventieth bonous campagin poster. This make it very popular, and famous.

Images from the Iwo Jima Battle