6 Momentous Kisses That Changed Our History
Tags: Relationships, Love, Sexuality, History, World

The First Recorded Kiss — Sometime around 1500 B.C.

Photo Credits: Shrimati

Many scholars and historians argue whether kissing started as some sort of a societal trend and then spread across the world, or it grew organically in different parts of the world. I don’t think we’ll ever find the right answer. However, according to research by Vaughn Bryant, who is a professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, the first-ever mentions of kissing are found in the written Vedic Sanskrit scriptures that date back to 1500 B.C. These written scriptures called the Vedas, laid the foundation of the religion of Hinduism.

After these early mentions, kissing appeared consistently in other ancient Indian and Hindu texts as well. Mahabharata, a renowned 4th-century text states that,

Apart from that Kamasutra, the ancient Indian text on sex and sexuality has a whole chapter on kissing and its different types.

The Kiss of Judas — Sometime around 1st Century A.D.

Photo Credits: Pinterest

Kissing doesn’t just represent romance. People around the world also see it as a sign of friendship or betrayal. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark tell us that,

Judas betrayed Jesus by giving him a kiss so that the armed men can take him away and eventually kill him.

Since then, the Kiss of Judas has become a famous allusion storytelling allusion. Some also believe that the “kiss of death” in various mafia literature and movies was inspired by that. For example, Al Pacino, in The Godfather 2, gives Fredo, his brother a kiss of death for deceiving him.

First Kiss in a Movie

In 1896, May Irwin and John C. Rice became the first people to kiss on film. They starred in a short film known as May Irwin kiss, Kiss or The Kiss. The two actors went to Thomas Edison’s studio in New Jersey and redid their final smooch scene from a play they were putting on in New York.

It was like any other kiss when they did it on stage, nothing sensational, but people say that the close-up scene of them kissing was too risqué.

The V-J Day Kiss of 1945

Photo Credits: Rare Historical Photos

A huge number of patients rushed into a Manhattan office that belonged to Greta Zimmer and stated that World War II had come to an end. Greta Zimmer, who was a dental assistant, and an Australian immigrant, did not know what to do, so she rushed to Times Square to see what the hype was all about. Everyone was cheering and was happy, and the news ticket announced that it was V-J Day and that the war in Japan had finally come to an end.

In the midst of this joyous moment for the people, Zimmer glanced away from the ticker, and at that very moment George Mendonsa, a Navy sailor rushed in and passionately kissed Zimmer. Mendonsa had begun drinking early in the day and hence has mistaken Zimmer for a nurse. Zimmer was caught in the surprise of the moment and tried to push the strange back. However, what both of them did not know was that two photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt and Victor Jorgensen had caught this moment on camera. This was recounted in The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Shot that Ended World War II.

The photo of Eisenstaedt is one of the most famous photos of WWII in U.S. history, partially because people mistook it for a photo of a Naval officer and a nurse reveling this moment of joy together. Several individuals have claimed over the years that they are the pair in the photograph. The photo has also stimulated great debate over who actually are the people in the photograph and whether or not the photograph represents a non-consensual moment.

In an interview Zimmer gave to the Library of Congress in 2005, she said,

“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed…the guy just came over and kissed or grabbed!”

The First Interracial Kiss in Start Trek

Photo Credits: NBC News

It wasn’t actually the first interracial kiss on U.S. television when William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols kissed in a 1968 episode of Star Trek. But it was the one with the most cultural influence it seemed to have.

“Captain James Kirk and Officer Nyota Uhura meet aliens in the episode titled “Plato’s Stepchildren,” who compel them to kiss each other through telekinesis. She remembers that NBC was concerned about how white Americans might respond to the scene in Nichols’ book Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, so they asked the actors to film two scenes: one with a kiss and one without a kiss. However, in order to ensure that NBC aired the kissing scene, Nichols and Shatner intentionally messed up all of the kissless takes.

Fraternal Socialist Kiss of 1979

Photo Credits: Youtube

“Communist state leaders frequently greeted each other during the Cold War with what is called the “socialist fraternal kiss.”

This may be on the cheek or the lips, but the most famous example is the 1979 image of Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union and Erich Honecker of East Germany kissing on the mouth by French photographer Régis Bossu.

The kiss occurred when Brezhnev visited East Berlin to mark the German Democratic Republic’s 30th anniversary. The Soviet artist Dmitri Vrubel recreated the image in a mural on the east side of the wall when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. My God, help me to survive this deadly love,” My God Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.”