KILROY

Did you ever wonder where the slogan originated? It was during World War 11 that Jim Kilroy started chalking his slogans at the shipyard near Boston.

Jim Kilroy was a 39 year old Bethlehem Steel Company shipyard worker from Halifax, Mass., at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to carefully survey ever-inner bottom and tank before issuing a contract. He become very upset when the Test Leaders always wanted him to look over the job with them and when he explained to them that he had already checked the job and could not spare the time, they would accuse him of not having looked the job over.

He got sick of being accused of not looking the jobs over so he started marking the manhole on top of the tank, where the tester could see it, "KILROY WAS HERE!"

After that, Kilroy started chalking the message every where he went aboard ships under construction at the shipyard. Normally these slogans would have been covered with paint before the ships went to sea. But, during the Second World War, they were dispatched to sea without being painted; so they could be used to transport troops and much needed war materials to various parts of the globe.

The servicemen spotted the "KILROY WAS HERE!" logos on the overheads, decks and bulkheads of the ships and quickly adopted the slogan as their own. In short order "KILROY WAS HERE!" be written on walls in every corner of the world. The slogan even inspired a Hollywood Movie called "KILROY WAS HERE!"

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