George Anthony Mendonsa (February 19, 1923 – February 17, 2019)

(Fox News) – The 18-year-old sailor shown kissing a woman in New York’s
Time Square in an iconic photo that captured the ecstatic celebrations at
the end of World War II died Sunday in Rhode Island. 

According to family members, George Mendonsa was two days short of his
96th birthday when he died at an assisted living facility in Middletown.

Mendonsa’s daughter, Sharon Molleur, told the Providence Journal her father
had fallen and had a seizure before he was pronounced dead. He lived at the
facility with his wife of 70 years.

Mendonsa was shown kissing a woman he never met, Greta Zimmer Friedman,
a dental assistant in a nurse’s uniform, on Aug. 14, 1945. Known as V-J Day,
it was the day Japan surrendered to the United States. People spilled into the
New York City streets to celebrate the news.

SHIRLEY SMITH

Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of his phonograph on
this day in 1877.

On this day in 1973, President Richard M. Nixon‘s attorney, J. Fred
Buzhardt, announced the presence of an 18½-minute gap in one of
the White House tape recordings related to the Watergate case.

President Nixon (seated) and H.R. Haldeman in 1972.

On this day in 1934, the Cole Porter musical "Anything
Goes" opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre (now
known as the Neil Simon Theatre). The musical has
been revived several times in the U.S. and Britain and
has been filmed twice. It has long been a popular
choice for school and community productions.

Ethel Merman (Ethel Agnes Zimmermann)
(January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984)

The modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster was born when a
sighting makes local news on May 2, 1933. The Scottish newspaper
Inverness Courier relates an account of a local couple who claim to
have seen "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface”
of Loch Ness, a large freshwater lake near Inverness, Scotland.

Revelations in 1994 that the famous 1934 photo (above) was a
complete hoax has only slightly dampened the enthusiasm of
tourists and investigators for the legendary beast of Loch Ness.

Justin Whiting, an eBay shopper in Spalding, U.K., purchased an
authentic tintype photo thought to be the earliest known photo of
legendary outlaw Jesse James at the young age of 14. After the
image was authenticated by forensic experts, it may now be
worth thousands or even millions of dollars. The photo was
originally bought by Whiting (below) for $10 in July 2017.