9 Fabulous Facts about The Statue of Liberty
- It all started at dinner one night near Paris in 1865. A group of Frenchmen discussing their dictator-like emperor and the democratic government of the U.S decided to build a monument to freedom. Thus was born the lady Liberty.
- The sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi imagined the monument to be the statue of a woman holding a torch burning with the light of freedom. And she was finally built by Gustave Eiffel with the help of tons of workers working ten hour days, seven days a week for nine years!
- In 1886 on October 28th, France dedicated the statue to America. The statue was to be a universal symbol of freedom. The seven points on her crown represent the seven seas and continents. The crown also has 25 windows you can look out of. You would have to climb 354 stairs(22 stories) to do that though.
- It is said that she was modeled after the image of the sculptor’s mom, but represents ‘Libertas’, the Roman Goddess of Freedom. She arrived in America in 214 crates, and was assembled thereafter. When she first arrived, she was copper colored. 30 years of oxidation turned her color green. The amount of copper used to build her could make 30 million pennies!
- Lady liberty is 151ft and one inches tall. Along with her pedestal, which is 154 ft tall, the entire monument comes to height of 305 ft 1 inch from the ground! She sure is one tall lady!
- Although she is one tough metallic lady, she does sway to the wind – a very fast one though. It takes a 50 mile/hr wind to sway her torch by about 6 inches! So much? Well of course! We expect nothing less from a statue that weighs 450,000 pounds!
- Did you know that she wears size 879 sandals on her 25 ft long feet?
- Lightning doesn’t strike twice, it is said…. or does it? The lady liberty is estimated to be hit by about 600 bolts of lightning every year! Yikes!
- Although she now has an American island to her name, she could have ended up at the mouth of the Suez canal in Egypt, if they hadn’t rejected her for being too old fashioned!
The statue of Liberty sure has a lot of interesting history, doesn’t it?
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