Every business wants its advertising to go viral. Many have achieved it… for a short time. But none have attained the long term success of Kilroy was here.
No one knows for sure why this graffiti is found around the world but most agree it was started and spread by American servicemen during World War II.
Some theories:
The leading theory gives credit for the famous mark to James J. Kilroy, a shipyard welding inspector from Quincy, MA. During WW II, J.J. Kilroy used the chalk tag to mark rivets he had checked, the standard hash marks being too easy to copy, erase or miss. (The NY Times said it began in 1946, with the mark found in ship hulls. Other evidence suggests 1945.) Somehow the mark reached land and GIs spread the word.
Another theory credits Richard Kilroy O’Malley, an Associated Press (AP) correspondent during WWII.
Still another says it was a gag started by an Army soldier tired of hearing that the Air Force were always first on the battle scene.
The bald cartoonish character with the long nose peering over a wall is attributed to an earlier graffiti Foo was here, an Australian tag from WWI (Foo is an an acronym (or backronym) for Forward Observation Officer). A similar character is Chad, a creation tied to British cartoonist George Edward Chatterton. Chad, also a WWII creation, was often accompanied by the phrase “Wot no ___?” attached (e.g Chad on the underbelly of a glider “Wot no engine?”).
Kilroy was here is supposedly marked on such hard-to-reach places as the Statue of Liberty, the Marco Polo Bridge in China, a high girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York, at the peak of Mt. Everest, on the underside of the Arc de Triomphe. It is also said to be scribbled in the dust on the moon. To this day, Kilroy lives.
The graffiti is so famous it is engraved on the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. (see image above).
Why did Kilroy become viral?
Sources: Wikipedia, snopes.com
