'Make Love, Not War:' 60 years of the peace sign

British graphic artist Gerald Holtom created the famous peace logo in 1958 for the demonstrations that took place during Easter that year against Britain's nuclear build-up. He derived the symbol from the "N" and "D" signs of the navy flag semaphore alphabet to signal "nuclear disarmament." Around 10,000 protesters set out from London to march on the nuclear weapons facility in Aldermaston.

The symbol quickly traveled to the US, most probably thanks to Bayard Rustin, who attended the Aldermaston protest and worked closely with civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King. King famously flashed the peace sign to reporters after learning that the senate passed the Civil Rights Bill in June, 1964. The peace sign now not only promoted nuclear disarmament but social justice and equality.

Holtom's symbol was especially embraced by the 1960s peace movement as millions of people around the world protested against the US military intervention in Vietnam and across southeast Asia. The photo above shows the peace sign held high above a large demonstration at the Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, with many protesters also wearing the anti-war symbol.

Not only the hippies and pacifists bore the peace sign to protest the Vietnam War, however. American soldiers in the region also painted the symbol on their helmets or flags to register their opposition to the war. The image above depicts US gunners near the Vietnamese-Laotian border.

John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono took a stand against the Vietnam War with their now-famous slogan. The couple became the vanguards of the peace movement in the late 1960s with their non-violent "bed-in" protests. In 1971, Lennon released the peace hymn "Imagine," and his widow Yoko Ono has been committed to anti-war and human rights activism till this day.

"Love instead of war" was the motto of the now-legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969. Around 500,000 opponents of the war flocked to the Catskill Mountains in the south of New York State, many with the peace sign displayed on their t-shirts and on the banners they held up as they listened to Jimi Hendrix (above), Janis Joplin, The Who and many other musicians who spread the anti-war message.

A group of Canadian conservationists sailed off the Alaskan coast with a ship named "Greenpeace" in September 1971 to prevent an atomic bomb test in Amchitka, an island in Alaska. The action raised awareness around the world and the US decided to discontinue the tests. The environmental group named itself after the protest boat featuring the peace sign and today it has three million members.

War opponents use the peace sign to this day, as shown here from the Heroes' Square in Budapest, where demonstrators protested against the military invasion of Iraq in 2006. The mission was led by the United States and the United Kingdom, and was the start of an ongoing state of war in the region that continues to this day.

The peace sign has recently been reinterpreted as a series of terrorists attack swept through Europe. Following the Paris attacks in November 2015, the French graphic artist Jean Jullien designed a peace sign incorporating the Eiffel Tower in the center. The drawing spread rapidly on social networks via the hashtag #PeaceForParis and was on display at mourning events all over the world.

On the occasion of the G20 summit held in Bonn, Germany in 2017, a farmer in Meinersen in Lower Saxony cut out this peace sign from his cornfield. Visible from above, the man appropriated the universal symbol for unity almost 60 years after Gerald Holtom created it. Its author never had the design copyrighted, so anyone can utilise the symbol and display it in any form.

In 2018, both the peace sign and the Easter march celebrate its 60th anniversary. The first Easter march for peace in Germany took place in 1960 during one of the tensest periods in the Cold War. And the tradition still lives on: The photo above was taken in Munich in 2017.