Kilroy

Sometime in the mid sixties, Disney’s Wonderful World of Color—the first generation morph of the original Mickey Mouse Club—did what the Disney studios do best. They appropriated a popular mythos and transformed it into a bloodless parody lacking any texture or complexity. In this case, they took the legend of Kilroy—the soldier who was everywhere and nowhere in World War II—and converted it into a mini-series. Kilroy in their version was THE soldier who actually wrote the famous epithet, “Kilroy was here!” He returns home to—Brooklyn?—and uses the more enlightened skills which he learned in the army to transform a group of aimless boys.

Kilroy is also the name of an OCLC research project that aims to build an Internet harvester program combined with full text databases and metadata databases of 'Net resources. Because the explosion of Internet resources makes it difficult if not impossible to create/maintain comprehensive Internet databases, the current major goal of Kilroy is to develop an electronic infrastructure needed to maintain 'Net-related information for other OCLC projects.

For more information: http://purl.oclc.org/kilroy

Kilroy is a European youth travel agent, based in Copenhagen with branches around Europe, mostly in Scandinavia. The company claim to specialize in "youthful" travel, such as custom-made trips to the Amazonas. The prices are slightly lower than other travelagents, provided that you're under 26 years of age or a legimate ISIC card carrier.

One of the advantages with Kilroy is the ability to change your travel route en route. The agency has deals with other travel agencies around to world so you can change the ticket there. The only hard thing is to find which travel agent represents Kilroy (Took me one week once).

The famous subject of World War II graffiti across Europe is one of the most well known images, but also one of the least understood. The phrase “Kilroy Was Here!” and the corresponding drawing became widespread wherever the American military traveled, symbolizing the country’s presence there. However, most-including the American soldiers drawing it-were unsure of its origins.

Because of this mystery, the radio network set up for American Armed Forces decided to cast a wide net, asking its listeners for any information about the cartoon’s creator. The most convincing result is reminiscent of the origins of the phrase “Uncle Sam”, a meat inspector who put his initials US on boxes of meat sent to troops. A ship inspector from Boston, Massachusetts called Kilroy, put his stamp of approval on all ships before sending them off, writing “Kilroy was Here” to assure the crew of their safety. Soldiers ignorant of the phrase’s meaning decided to write it throughout the countries they were fighting in, sparking further Kilroy hysteria. While this is a logical story, its accuracy cannot be fully verified, nor can the cartoon’s country of origin (while it is widely associated with the United States, it also could have originated in Great Britain.)

It appears that American soldiers were not the only ones unsure of its origins. Adolf Hitler, upon seeing the great number of images, ordered a full sweep of Germany to find this character, who he assumed was a quick American spy.