It’s August 14th, 1945, and photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt is chronicling people celebrating victory over Japan. Announced earlier in the evening by President Truman, Times Square rapidly fills with joyful crowds. One couple expresses their happiness with a kiss, not knowing it will become the most famous in modern history. To this day, nobody knows their names. But what we do know, as this contact sheet so wonderfully shows, is that their spontaneous happiness was shared by an entire nation.

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