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.

Germany’s anti nuclear movement got its start in the early 1970s, when protestors came out in force against plans for a nuclear power plant at Wyhl, close to the French border. Police were accused of using unnecessary force against the peaceful demonstrations. But the activists ultimately won, and plans for the Wyhl power station were scrapped in 1975.

Following the success of civil disobedience in Wyhl, similar protests were held in Brokdorf and Kalkar in the late 70s. Though they failed to prevent reactors being built, they proved that the anti-nuclear movement was a growing force.

Gorleben has seen fierce protest against the nuclear industry ever since plans to store nuclear waste in a disused salt mine there were first announced in 1977. The site is a sparsely populated area close to the then-border with East Germany. Yet locals quickly showed they weren't going to accept radioactive material close to their homes without a fight.

From the beginning, the German anti-nuclear movement brought together church organizations, farmers and concerned local residents - along with student activists, academics, and peace protestors who saw a link between nuclear power and the atom bomb. Being at the frontline of the Cold War meant the threat of nuclear war loomed large in many German minds.

In the late 70s, anti-nuclear activists joined with other environment and social justice campaigners to form the Green Party. Today, this is a major force in German politics and probably the most powerful Green Party in the world. They won their first seats in the German federal parliament in 1983.

In 1986, a reactor meltdown hundreds of miles away in Ukraine hardened public opinion against nuclear power in Germany. The Chernobyl disaster released radioactive fallout across Europe. In Germany, people were warned not to drink milk, eat fresh meat or let children play on playgrounds, where the sand might have been contaminated.

In 1998, the Green Party came into German federal government, as the junior partner in a coalition with the Social Democrats. In 2002, the "red-green" government passed a law banning new nuclear power plants and limiting the lives of existing plants so that the last would be switched off in 2022.

Even with an end to nuclear power finally in sight, the anti-nuclear movement still had plenty to protest about. Many activists, including in the Green Party (with leaders Jürgen Tritten and Claudia Roth pictured above in Berlin in 2009) wanted nuclear power phased out far faster. Meanwhile, the German movement continued to join international calls for a global end to nuclear power.

Then there was still the question of what to do with nuclear waste. By 1995, containers of radioactive material were coming back from reprocessing abroad for storage at Gorleben. Over the years, transport of these "castors" has regularly been met with mass protests, including clashes with police.

Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party had always opposed the law limiting the life of Germany's nuclear power plants - so after the party came to power in 2009, it effectively scrapped it by prolonging the lives of power plants - a major setback for the anti-nuclear movement.

In 201,1 the meltdown of a Japanese nuclear reactor saw Merkel's government make a rapid about-face. Within days of the Fukushima disaster, it passed a law to shut down the last of Germany's nuclear power plants by 2022. The phase-out was back on, and eight reactors were shut down that same year.

Since the grassroots action of the 70s, Germany's anti-nuclear movement has seen the country commit to ditching nuclear altogether. It's also helped push forward a shift to renewables, making Germany an international example in the fight against climate change. But the protests go on. This week, activists stopped the first boat carrying nuclear waste.