It is Independence Day, July 4, 2025 and we are celebrating the 249th birthday of The United States of America. When you think of things that represent our country, one of them has to be The Statue of Liberty, which was a gift from the people of France.
The story of The Statue of Liberty is one of inspiration, determination, and of course liberty and freedom. Below are some things you may not know about Lady Liberty and it's twenty year journey to New York:
1. The original inspiration was from a French legal scholar, Edourard-Rene Lefebvre. He was came up with the idea after the American Civil War ended and slavery was defeated. He wanted to give a gift to The United States to celebrate the concept of liberty.
2. Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was the 31-year-old sculptor that was asked to visit The United States to get support for the project. As he entered New York Harbor, he was inspired to immediately draw a picture of a robed woman raising a torch and he wrote, "Liberty Enlightening The World."
3. Bartholdi modeled Lady Liberty after his mom, Charlotte.
4. Many years of waiting took place before it was agreed that France would fund the statue and the pedestal would be funded by America.
5. One of the sculptors who worked with Bartholdi was Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who built the Eiffel Tower.
6. Financial problems in financing Lady Liberty was so significant that France had a lottery that raised the remaining $400,000 and the statue was presented in Paris on July 4, 1884, 161 years ago.
7. In America, $100,000 was raised by New York World publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, who put pictures of people who donated in his newspaper.
8. The statue was taken apart and put into 214 boxes and sent across the ocean and then reassembled over fifteen months in New York.
9. President Grover Cleveland dedicated The Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886 in front of hundreds of millions of people in New York Harbor. His remarks ended with, "A stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and oppression, until liberty enlightens the world."
A few more random and interesting statistics: When it was built, The Statue of Liberty was the tallest structure ever built and it weighed 450,000 pounds. Lady Liberty wears an 879 shoe and it is struck by lightening an average of 600 times a year. I'm pretty certain you did not know that.
No comments:
Post a Comment