This past weekend, I was bouncing around downtown when I stopped at a famous bar called Kilroy's (more so famous in Bloomington, Indiana). I'd seen their logo hundreds of times and never gave it a second thought, it was just another cool design.

An older gentleman sitting next to me asked, "You know where that comes from?" He looked like he knew his shit, so I replied, "Nope. Is there a story behind it?"

A couple of beers and a conversation later, here's what I found out.

Long before the internet gave us memes, World War II had one of its own. If you've ever seen a little bald guy with a giant nose peeking over a wall alongside the words "Kilroy Was Here," you've stumbled across one of the most famous pieces of graffiti in history. During WWII, that simple drawing popped up everywhere Allied troops went, from bombed-out buildings in Europe to tiny islands in the Pacific. Nobody could escape Kilroy.

So who was Kilroy? The most widely accepted story points to James J. Kilroy, a shipyard inspector in Quincy, Massachusetts. His job was to inspect rivets on Liberty ships being built for the war effort. After finishing an inspection, he'd write "Kilroy Was Here" in chalk so workers couldn't claim the same section twice. Once those ships were completed, many of the compartments were sealed shut until sailors opened them overseas. When sailors finally opened those sealed compartments somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific, many were greeted by the words "Kilroy Was Here." It quickly became an inside joke that Kilroy had somehow managed to get there before they did.

The phrase spread like wildfire. Before long, American soldiers were scribbling "Kilroy Was Here" on walls, bridges, bunkers, tanks, and just about anything that would hold chalk or paint. It became a badge of honor, a morale booster, and a funny way of saying, "We made it here." Troops even tried to leave it in the most impossible places they could find.

The famous little face wasn't actually Kilroy's creation. Similar doodles already existed overseas. In Britain, the same peeking figure was known as "Mr. Chad" and Australians had their own version called "Foo." American troops combined the familiar doodle with Kilroy's phrase, creating the version that would become legendary.

As you'd expect, the stories surrounding Kilroy only got bigger over time. Veterans claimed the graffiti showed up on the beaches of Normandy shortly after D-Day, inside newly delivered tanks and bombers, and on remote Pacific islands almost as soon as Allied forces arrived. Whether every story is true or not, they all helped build the legend that Kilroy was somehow always one step ahead.

One of the best tales says Soviet leader Joseph Stalin spotted "Kilroy Was Here" written inside a VIP restroom during the 1945 Potsdam Conference and demanded to know who this mysterious Kilroy was, convinced he might be a spy. Another claims Adolf Hitler believed Kilroy was an Allied super-agent because the message kept appearing wherever Allied troops advanced. Historians have never found solid evidence either story actually happened, but they're still too good not to tell.

More than 80 years later, Kilroy is still around. What started as a chalk mark in a Massachusetts shipyard became one of history's first truly viral symbols, spreading around the world without a single computer, smartphone, or social media account. A simple drawing and three words became a piece of history that traveled farther than anyone could have imagined.