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George Mendonsa, the man in the photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square in New York City after World War II, died at the age of 95.
Domestic AP

The man on the iconic picture of an exuberant Navy sailor kissing a woman at the end of World War II, in Times Square, has passed away.

George Mendonsa, 95, had an epileptic seizure and fell in a shelter in Middletown, Rhode Island, said his daughter, Sharon Molleur, at the Providence Journal. He lived there with his 70-year-old wife Rita, and died Sunday, two days away from his 96th birthday.

The photo was taken on August 14, 1945, known as V-J Day, the day Japan officially went to the United States during the Second World War. Published in Life magazine under the title "VJ Day in Times Square", it revealed the joy felt by Americans and people around the world at the end of the war: 406,000 Americans died and 671,000 were wounded, according to the US Census Bureau.

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More: Death of a woman on the iconic photo of World War II, Times Square, embracing

George Mendonsa, the man on the iconic picture of an exuberant Navy sailor kissing a woman at the end of the Second World War, in Times Square, has passed away. (Photo11: Victor Jorgensen, US Navy via AP)

When photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took the photograph in 1945, he did not document any information about the subjects in the photo. Their identity remained a mystery for years. Even today, people have used everything from 3D scanning of the face at the position of the sun on the photo to try to determine exactly who the couple was.

Mendonsa kissed the dental assistant Greta Zimmer Friedman, mistakenly thinking that she was a war nurse because of her uniform. She came to represent the 342,000 women identified by the Census Bureau who served during the war as pilots, nurses and more.

Friedman contacted Life in the 1960s after seeing the photo in an Eisenstaedt photo book to inform the magazine that it was her. The magazine told him that it was about another woman until 1980, when representatives contacted her. She met Eisenstaedt, according to an interview with the Library of Congress.

A visitor passes Alfred Eisenstaedt's "VJ Day in Times Square, New York, NY, 1945" at the exhibition "Life I Grown Photographs" in Rome. (Photo11: GABRIEL BOUYS, AFP / Getty Images)

Mendonsa's claims were confirmed by a 2012 book titled "The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo Ending World War II". although some remain skeptical.

Friedman died in 2016 at the age of 92 after a fight against pneumonia. She was buried with her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.

Contribute: The Associated Press

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