David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

NBC’s Star Trek was the first programme to show a white man kissing a black woman. In the episode ‘Plato’s Children’, aliens with psychic powers force Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to kiss Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols).

In 1969 an effort was made to crack down on young lovers who were smooching in public in the town of Inca on the island of Majorca. When the police chief began handing out citations that cost offenders 500 pesetas per kiss, a group of 30 couples protested by staging a kiss-in at the harbour at Cala Figuera. Following a massive roundup by police, the amorous rebels were fined 45,000 pesetas for their defiant canoodling and then released.

One cinema kiss that turned heads among the movie-going public was between two male actors, Peter Finch and Murray Head, in the 1971 film Sunday, Bloody Sunday . The British tale of a bisexual love triangle included a medium close-up shot of this kiss in a scene originally planned to have featured only an embrace from afar. Director John Schlesinger commented that Finch and Head ‘were certainly less shocked by the kiss than the technicians on the set were. When Finch was asked about the scene by somebody on TV, he said, “I did it for England.”’

In an unprecedented gesture of humility, Pope Paul VI kissed the feet of Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon, envoy of Patriarch Demetrios I, who was head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, during a Mass at the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1975. The two men were commemorating the tenth anniversary of the lifting of excommunications that the churches of Constantinople and Rome had conferred on each other during the eleventh century. Taken aback by the pontiff’s dramatic action, Meliton attempted to kiss the pope’s feet in return but the pope prevented him from doing so. Meliton instead kissed his hand.

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was engaged in discussions with the Kuwait oil minister when the king’s nephew, Prince Faisal ibn Mussad Abdel Aziz, burst into the office unannounced. The king stood and, assuming that the prince wished to offer him holy greetings for Mohammed’s birthday, lowered his head and waited for the traditional kiss. It never arrived. Instead the prince fired a bullet into the king’s head, and another into his neck, killing him.

Ruth van Herpen visited an art gallery in Oxford, England, in 1977 and kissed a painting by American artist Jo Baer, leaving red lipstick stains on the $18,000 work. Restoration costs were reported to be as much as $1,260. Appearing in court, van Herpen explained, ‘I only kissed it to cheer it up. It looked so cold.’

The first kiss to reach the movie screen in India was between actor Shashi Kapoor and actress Zeenat Aman in the 1978 film Love Sublime . This landmark kiss, a product of new film guidelines, triggered a nationwide debate over censorship. Kapoor felt that the increased creative freedom would only add logic to Indian love stories and result in less cinema violence. Chief minister and film actor M.G. Ramachandran called for a mass protest, labelling the kissing scenes ‘an insult’.

The first visible kiss between two women on an American network television series took place in 1991 on the show L.A.Law , when Michelle Greene kissed Amanda Donohoe. However, it was a later kiss, on the March 1, 1994, ABC-TV broadcast of the situation comedy Roseanne that caused a sensation. In a controversial scene well-publicised in the press, guest star Mariel Hemingway kisses series star Roseanne Arnold on the mouth. The kiss occurs in a ‘gay bar’ setting, and Hemingway portrays a lesbian stripper whose kiss causes Roseanne to question her own sensibilities. The episode (whose script originally included a second kiss between two additional women) became the subject of much high-profile bickering between ABC executives and series producers Tom and Roseanne Arnold during the weeks prior to its airing. Up to the eleventh hour, the very inclusion of the kiss appeared to remain in question, prompting protests by gay rights organizations. ABC finally let the kiss happen, but added a viewer warning at the start of the episode. The first lesbian kiss on British TV was broadcast two years later, on Christmas Eve 1993, when Brookside ’s Beth (Anna Friel) and Margaret (Nicola Stephenson), shared an eight-second smooch.

Six-year-old Johnathan Prevette, a first-grader at Southwest Elementary School in Lexington, North Carolina, kissed a classmate on the cheek. A teacher saw the September 19, 1996, incident and reported it to the school principal, Lisa Horne, who punished Johnathan by keeping him from attending an ice cream party and ordering him to spend a day in a disciplinary programme. But Johnathan’s mother called a local radio talk show, word of the incident spread and within six months the US Department of Education had rewritten its sexual harassment guidelines to omit kisses by first graders. For the record, Johnathan said that the girl asked him for a kiss.

For the opening number of the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera sang Madonna’s 1984 hit ‘Like a Virgin’ while wearing white wedding gowns. As the music segued into Madonna’s latest hit ‘Hollywood’, Madonna stepped out of a wedding cake wearing a tuxedo. What followed was a drag show of sorts with Madonna playing the groom and Britney and Christina the virginal brides. The performance climaxed with a French kiss between Madonna and Britney and then between Madonna and Christina. The kisses overshadowed the awards themselves and were front-page news around the world.

Bahrain-based MBC-TV attempted to introduce a Middle Eastern version of the voyeuristic reality show ‘Big Brother’ to Arabic-speaking audiences. A few minutes into the first episode, Abdel Hakim of Saudi Arabia kissed Kawthar of Tunisia. This ran so counter to cultural tradition that public protests broke out and the show was cancelled after only two weeks.

Married November 5, 1919, Hollywood’s smouldering Great Lover was locked out on his wedding night by his lovely bride. His first marriage lasted less than six hours.

After surviving her one-day marriage, Gabor commented, ‘I’m a wonderful housekeeper. Whenever I leave a man, I keep his house.’

Before she gained fame in such films as Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Shane , Arthur fell in love with ‘a nice Jewish boy’ named Julian Anker because ‘he looked like Abraham Lincoln’. They married on a whim, but both sets of parents were horrified and the couple filed for annulment the following day.

Pop superstar Britney Spears was married for 48 hours to an old Kentwood, Louisiana buddy. The marriage took place in Las Vegas at the Little White Wedding Chapel. The bride wore a baseball cap and torn jeans. Both were 22 years old, and claimed they were not intoxicated at the time. Said the groom, ‘It was just crazy, man. We said, “Let’s do something wild. Let’s get married, for the hell of it.”’ Spears made no comment. Calling it ‘a mistake’, the couple had a judge annul the marriage, which took two hours.