From the historic archives of The Associated Press, Ethernity and The AP present the original negative of the world’s most famous photograph, a rarely seen piece of United States history. AP war correspondent Joe Rosenthal shot the masterpiece atop Mount Suribachi on the small Pacific island of Iwo Jima around noon on Friday, February 19th, 1945. Rosenthal hoped he captured the iconic moment but had no way of knowing until the film was developed. By sundown, Rosenthal’s film was on a boat to Guam for processing. AP photo editor Jack Bodkin, who had enlisted in the Navy, was the first to see the picture of six Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi. "Here’s one for all time", he declared, as he sent the image by Navy radio to San Francisco where it was picked up by AP’s national Wirephoto network and distributed on Saturday, Feb. 24, 1945. It ran in newspapers on Sunday morning, 17 and ½ hours after it was taken.