Iconic ass-bandit identified?

Scientists have used new imaging techniques that may help to identify who the sailor in this classic photo actually is:

Many, including Carl Muscardello, claimed to be the sailor. But George Mendonsa, an 82-year-old Navy vet and retired fisherman from Newport, R.I., gladly submitted to high-tech testing to prove he was the one in the famous photo.

"When I hear someone else trying to get credit for it, my blood boils," Mendonsa said. "I want that identification."

He approached the Naval War College Museum in Newport, which contacted the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Mass. The lab has a machine called "the dome" that takes thousands of photos of a person's head from different angles in just seconds. The photos are converted into a 3-D computer image that can be tilted at the exact same angle as the sailor's head in the 1945 photo.

They had to "de-age" the guy's head in the photos for comparison purposes, and the associate director of the lab admits that the scans don't offer "100 percent, irrefutable scientific evidence" that Mendosna is the sailor in the photo, but it's still kind of cool.

And besides, the nurse from the photo is still around, too:

There has been consensus for some time that Edith Shain, 87, is the nurse. But she says she has no idea who the sailor is because she had never seen him before that moment and never recognized him again.

She can finally nail the creep for sexual harassment. Hel-lo new Florida condo!