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The Statue of Liberty · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Chuck in. There is a certain lady holding an
0:18
Speaker 1: open flip. Nope, holding an open flame and wearing sandals,
0:24
Speaker 1: so this must be sandals and lady, are we at
0:28
Speaker 1: a fish concert? Yep, she's an app that has is
0:33
Speaker 1: an open flame on her phone? Did she just does
0:36
Speaker 1: she have a whippet balloon at her feet? Yes, that's
0:40
Speaker 1: exactly right. You can't see it from below the pedestal, though. Ah,
0:45
Speaker 1: that's very nice, so Chuck, No, No, it's so wrong.
0:50
Speaker 1: I wasn't talking about someone at a fish concert. I
0:52
Speaker 1: was talking about the Statue of Liberty. Good, because that's
0:56
Speaker 1: what I researched. Same here, same here. Because if we
1:00
Speaker 1: had just both happened to research the wrong thing. Um,
1:04
Speaker 1: but it was the same thing, we could have still
1:06
Speaker 1: just pulled it out like we are right now. Maybe,
1:10
Speaker 1: But but we both researched the Liberty Enlightening the World
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Speaker 1: statue that's right, better known as the Statue of Liberty
1:17
Speaker 1: to the you know, HOI POLOI, But for those in
1:19
Speaker 1: the know, it's really Liberty Enlightening the World. And hope
1:23
Speaker 1: is Hawaiian for huddled masses. That's right, wretched, um wretched?
1:28
Speaker 1: Uh it wasn't. Yeah, it was a wretched you're cold
1:31
Speaker 1: and tired and wretched? Were they wretched? That's that's how
1:35
Speaker 1: Mma Lazarus put it. And I mean, I don't think
1:38
Speaker 1: she was being me, and I think she was saying
1:40
Speaker 1: that the state that they found themselves in was fairly wretched.
1:45
Speaker 1: She called them your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
1:48
Speaker 1: the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. And she was
1:52
Speaker 1: talking to continental Europe. But she was also basically saying,
1:56
Speaker 1: like you guys suck. You send us your worst. We're
1:58
Speaker 1: going to turn them into our best. Right. And like
2:02
Speaker 1: you said, we're talking about the statue that if you
2:04
Speaker 1: have been to New York City, Uh sits there in
2:07
Speaker 1: the harbor, looming large at the time, the largest statue.
2:13
Speaker 1: And clear up one misconception before we kind of get
2:15
Speaker 1: to the history. You often hear like it was a
2:18
Speaker 1: gift from the French government to the American government. Uh.
2:22
Speaker 1: Not true, And I always sort of thought that, but
2:25
Speaker 1: as we will learn, it's an even cooler story because
2:28
Speaker 1: like real people paid for it with oftentimes very small donations,
2:33
Speaker 1: much like uh Bernie Sanders was was building the statue.
2:37
Speaker 1: It was just about to smoop him with that nice
2:39
Speaker 1: work man. Thanks so um yeah, they they it was.
2:43
Speaker 1: It was paid for by hard fought funds that came
2:47
Speaker 1: from the people. I love that too. But there was
2:49
Speaker 1: one guy who came up with the idea. This is
2:51
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's like there was a
2:53
Speaker 1: dude walking around and the idea for the statue of
2:56
Speaker 1: Liberty popped into his head. And I love stories that
2:59
Speaker 1: star like that, some guys just walking down the boulevard
3:03
Speaker 1: and his name happens to in this case be Eduard
3:06
Speaker 1: de Delaboulay, and he was walking around France in eighteen
3:10
Speaker 1: sixty five and saying, you know, this place used to
3:13
Speaker 1: be a lot better when it was a democracy, right,
3:16
Speaker 1: and now we're under the rule of Napoleon the third
3:20
Speaker 1: things aren't so great. And you know where things are
3:22
Speaker 1: looking pretty decent is over there in those United States
3:26
Speaker 1: where they have just uh Lincoln has come along issued
3:32
Speaker 1: the Emancipate Patient Proclamation, and like they're trying to do
3:35
Speaker 1: things right over there, and I think we should recognize
3:38
Speaker 1: them and also sort of say to our own French people. Hey,
3:43
Speaker 1: look at what they're doing over there, not bad? Yeah,
3:46
Speaker 1: by by honoring America. And in this case it was
3:49
Speaker 1: going to be giving America birthday gift from France UM
3:53
Speaker 1: on our hundredth birthday in eighteen seventy six. Yeah, it
3:56
Speaker 1: would kind of shine a light on friends and be like, hey,
3:58
Speaker 1: look at how great things can be. Like they ratify
4:00
Speaker 1: the thirteenth Amendment. Over there is no slavery anymore. Like
4:03
Speaker 1: people are free, they're taking immigrants, and it's like a
4:05
Speaker 1: beautiful place. Let's be more like America. UM and right. Yeah,
4:12
Speaker 1: So he started um asking around um and and sharing
4:16
Speaker 1: his idea and it actually kind of caught fire in
4:19
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. It wasn't like a ho home
4:21
Speaker 1: idea by any means. There are a lot of people
4:23
Speaker 1: in France who supported it. And one of the people
4:25
Speaker 1: who joined on board very early on was Frederica Augusta Bartoldi,
4:30
Speaker 1: who ended up being the sculptor who sculpted the statue
4:33
Speaker 1: of Liberty. And he sculpted. He came up with the
4:36
Speaker 1: idea really fast, almost suspiciously fast, and when people grabbed
4:40
Speaker 1: him by his lapels and said how did you come
4:42
Speaker 1: up with this beautiful idea so fast they shook out
4:44
Speaker 1: of him a piece of scrap paper that he had
4:47
Speaker 1: submitted elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah, he did what any great designer does,
4:53
Speaker 1: which is kind of sifted through his bag of used
4:57
Speaker 1: tricks because he was on a deadline. He actually wasn't
5:00
Speaker 1: on a deadline, but yeah. He had in the eighteen
5:02
Speaker 1: fifties gone to the Middle East and was inspired by
5:07
Speaker 1: the Sphinx and the Pyramids and said, you know, I'd
5:10
Speaker 1: like to do something really nice like that. And he
5:12
Speaker 1: got his chance when Egypt said, hey, we want a
5:16
Speaker 1: big lighthouse in the Suez Canal here, and he came
5:19
Speaker 1: up with this cool, large, tall lady with a lamp
5:23
Speaker 1: to guide the people's way into through the Suez Canal.
5:28
Speaker 1: And then they said, nah, we don't think we're gonna
5:31
Speaker 1: do that anyway, And instead of just being angry and upset,
5:35
Speaker 1: he said, that's fine, I'll just repurpose it. Yeah, he said,
5:38
Speaker 1: it's like water off a duck's back. Egypt, I don't care.
5:41
Speaker 1: I got I got other things to do. And I'd
5:43
Speaker 1: like to think of it as not that um that
5:46
Speaker 1: that we got a second hand design, but more like
5:49
Speaker 1: the design was so great that it must be, it
5:53
Speaker 1: must come into existence, and that it came into an
5:55
Speaker 1: even better existence in the harbor off of Manhattan Um
6:00
Speaker 1: rather than the Suez Canal. Yeah, he worked smarter, not harder.
6:04
Speaker 1: That's right. That's another way to put if you're a landscaper.
6:07
Speaker 1: He had to change a few things around. He had
6:10
Speaker 1: to change Yeah, that in green side up. Those are
6:12
Speaker 1: the only two things you have to remember. Those are
6:14
Speaker 1: kind of the rules, I thought. Yeah. Uh so he
6:16
Speaker 1: changed up a few things from his initial Egyptian design um,
6:21
Speaker 1: namely the Egyptian look. He changed that up and instead
6:25
Speaker 1: of this kind of Egyptian headdress, came up with that
6:28
Speaker 1: cool spiky hat. Yeah. Hey, I didn't realize this, did you. That?
6:33
Speaker 1: Like that crown against her forehead, that's a crown, but
6:37
Speaker 1: this those spikes coming off off of it are like
6:40
Speaker 1: reflections of rays from the sun. They're not meant to be.
6:43
Speaker 1: It's not like a structural part of the crown or
6:46
Speaker 1: or not. It's not meant to be. Oh so that's
6:49
Speaker 1: supposed to be interesting. Yeah, it's seven rays of sunlight
6:54
Speaker 1: shining out from it like that that I guess is
6:57
Speaker 1: reflecting off of It's meant to be like the sun
7:00
Speaker 1: reflecting all. Yeah, you think it's just like a like
7:03
Speaker 1: almost like, um, I don't know, like a like a
7:07
Speaker 1: Guarus kind of thing. Yeah, like a spiky, cool grown
7:10
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. Uh, yeah, I'd be interested. I wonder if
7:13
Speaker 1: anyone is done little photo shopping without that to see
7:16
Speaker 1: the true nature of the hat the ground, like to see.
7:19
Speaker 1: I know a few people who are good at photoshop.
7:22
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you're gonna get your face in
7:24
Speaker 1: my body, that's right, and our worst pictures. Uh. The
7:29
Speaker 1: other thing they changed, or one of the other things
7:31
Speaker 1: he changed, was the original statue had a lamp, and
7:35
Speaker 1: he said, the lamp is nice for the Suis Canal,
7:37
Speaker 1: but let's go with a torch for the United States.
7:40
Speaker 1: And because it um, it symbolized enlightenment. It was liberty,
7:45
Speaker 1: enlightening the world, you know, Like, I guess you could
7:48
Speaker 1: enlighten the world with the lamp, but the lamps more
7:50
Speaker 1: like showing the way. This is like casting the light
7:55
Speaker 1: of enlightenment out in every direction. You know that better
8:00
Speaker 1: metaphorical showing the metaphorical way. Sure almost had metaphysical um.
8:05
Speaker 1: Then there was also that tablet. She's holding it her side.
8:10
Speaker 1: The tablet of law with July four, seventeen seventy six
8:15
Speaker 1: and Roman numerals they're inscribed on the side. That was
8:17
Speaker 1: a new edition because the first, the original one um
8:21
Speaker 1: progress carrying a light to Asia in the US canal
8:23
Speaker 1: just had her had her hand like cup by her side,
8:27
Speaker 1: not even doing anything. It's kind of like hand on
8:29
Speaker 1: the hip right or now, Yeah, when I dip, you dip,
8:32
Speaker 1: we dip right. Uh. And then to call back your
8:36
Speaker 1: very sly little joke that you stuck in there at
8:39
Speaker 1: the front of this podcast. You cannot from the ground
8:43
Speaker 1: level because the pedestal is so tall. See what's going
8:47
Speaker 1: on with the feet? And I had never really looked,
8:50
Speaker 1: but right there, if you google a picture of Lady
8:53
Speaker 1: Statue of Liberty's feet, there are broken shackles and a
8:56
Speaker 1: broken chain that represents the abolition of slavery. And I
9:01
Speaker 1: never knew that was there either. Yeah. And so after
9:04
Speaker 1: Bart told they said, listen, guys, look, I made all
9:06
Speaker 1: these changes. They they have flattened out his suit and
9:10
Speaker 1: straightened his tie and put his glasses back on, and
9:12
Speaker 1: then they lift him up on their shoulders and they said,
9:14
Speaker 1: bear Toldie, Bear Toldie, And they carried him down the
9:18
Speaker 1: avenue um and as a kind of an initial parade,
9:22
Speaker 1: there'd be a lot of parades surrounding the Statue of
9:24
Speaker 1: Liberty and its development. He disappeared. It was an accident, man,
9:31
Speaker 1: it was an accident. The group agreed never to speak
9:33
Speaker 1: of it. But so regardless, what I'm trying to say
9:37
Speaker 1: is Bear toldie he got the contract to to be
9:40
Speaker 1: the guy who designed this wonderful statue for France to
9:44
Speaker 1: give to the United States. Right, so he hops on
9:48
Speaker 1: a a plane. No no, no, not a plane. I
9:52
Speaker 1: would guess a steamership or something. I can't imagine how
9:55
Speaker 1: long that kind of stuff just took, how patients, But
9:59
Speaker 1: it's a ocean voyage. There's like a sense of adventure, definitely,
10:02
Speaker 1: but also after you do it, like for the umteenth time,
10:05
Speaker 1: it's probably like, come on, although if you don't have
10:08
Speaker 1: any frame of reference of things going any faster, maybe
10:12
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem quite as long, like you and I
10:15
Speaker 1: having flown taking a steamer. It's just like but it's
10:19
Speaker 1: not like someone would have said, you know what else
10:21
Speaker 1: is a sense of adventure? The concorde, that's right, A
10:25
Speaker 1: lot quicker too, but very very adventurous. Heard they're bringing
10:29
Speaker 1: that back. Yeah. I think we talked about that in
10:32
Speaker 1: an episode. Didn't we do one on the concord? Yeah,
10:35
Speaker 1: but I don't remember us talking about coming back. I
10:38
Speaker 1: think we did. I think we mentioned I mean, there
10:41
Speaker 1: needs to be something super fast. They're like at this point, yes,
10:45
Speaker 1: we're there, we're at teleportation stage. We're definitely lagging behind.
10:49
Speaker 1: I think. So that's like the Seinfeld gag when they
10:54
Speaker 1: when they talk about we're going to try and like
10:57
Speaker 1: make up some airtime or whatever, and he was just like,
11:00
Speaker 1: why aren't they just flying as fast as they can
11:03
Speaker 1: every single time? Does it? That's like, that's a very
11:06
Speaker 1: good point, the mind boggling Seinfeld. Alright, So in seventy one,
11:11
Speaker 1: he gets on that steamership. He comes over to travel
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Speaker 1: to the United States to try and get some support
11:16
Speaker 1: because this is going to be a very expensive project,
11:19
Speaker 1: and maybe to kind of scout out some locations and boom,
11:22
Speaker 1: right there, as he's pulling into New York Harbor, he
11:25
Speaker 1: sees the light, the metaphorical light, and sees Bedloe Island
11:29
Speaker 1: b E d l o E right there in the harbor,
11:33
Speaker 1: and he was like, wait a minute, what is this place?
11:35
Speaker 1: And everyone said Oh, it's nothing. It's just it's a
11:38
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing ground, uh for the Lenape Native Americans
11:42
Speaker 1: here before us, and then the Dutch settled it, and
11:45
Speaker 1: now the U. S Military owns it and it's you
11:49
Speaker 1: don't really need to worry about it. And he was like, no,
11:50
Speaker 1: I do, because that, my friends, is the perfect spot. Yeah,
11:54
Speaker 1: it was perfectly situated to watch over the ships coming
11:58
Speaker 1: into the harbor. Um and uh, that became the spot
12:02
Speaker 1: for the Statue of Liberty. It really is a great
12:04
Speaker 1: spot for it. And it was renamed Liberty Island in
12:08
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six by the Eisenhower administration. So so but totally.
12:13
Speaker 1: He goes back to France and um, he's met some
12:16
Speaker 1: Americans and drummed up the interests among Americans. He's found
12:20
Speaker 1: the site for this amazing place that he's going to
12:23
Speaker 1: build the world's tallest sculpture on um and he ends
12:27
Speaker 1: up helping found the Franco American Union, which, as you said,
12:32
Speaker 1: this wasn't a gift from the French government to the
12:35
Speaker 1: American government. As as a matter of fact, I think
12:38
Speaker 1: that was the first thing that Bert TOLDI and his
12:40
Speaker 1: his friends tried. The friends said no, the Americans said, no,
12:45
Speaker 1: that's just ridiculous. It's gonna cost too much and it
12:48
Speaker 1: will never work. So they started trying trying to cobble
12:52
Speaker 1: together like private support for it, and the results of
12:55
Speaker 1: that was the Franco American Union. And I have one thing,
12:57
Speaker 1: one thing to say about the Franco American and Uck
13:01
Speaker 1: I was like, Franco American sounds really familiar. And then
13:03
Speaker 1: I realized Franco American spaghetti. Remember that spaghetti in a can. Yeah,
13:09
Speaker 1: it makes zero sense. The French aren't well known for
13:12
Speaker 1: their spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, spaghetti right the um the
13:18
Speaker 1: Italians are. And I think it was an Italian company.
13:21
Speaker 1: I think they took that name on because they were
13:23
Speaker 1: founded around the time that the Franco American Union was
13:26
Speaker 1: trying to drum up interest in the Statue of Liberty project.
13:29
Speaker 1: I couldn't find support for that. But that's my new hypothesis.
13:33
Speaker 1: All right, Let's say we take a break and ponder that.
13:36
Speaker 1: Maybe have some of it, all right, because that's not
13:38
Speaker 1: chapoy already, that's different, right, I I don't I like both,
13:41
Speaker 1: but yes, that's different. All right, Well, we'll go do
13:44
Speaker 1: a sample of each and we'll come back with our
13:46
Speaker 1: winner right after this. Who won? They were both winners,
14:15
Speaker 1: all right. I love that ravioli still, I'd never get it,
14:19
Speaker 1: like once every three or four years, I'll get that
14:22
Speaker 1: tangy what is even in that? What kind of meat
14:25
Speaker 1: is in that ravioli? And I'll eat it. I know,
14:27
Speaker 1: I haven't had Franco American spaghetti since I can't even remember,
14:31
Speaker 1: but I do remember it being the sweet spaghetti, because
14:35
Speaker 1: that's what we need, right. Uh. Have you ever been
14:38
Speaker 1: to the Statue of Liberty, first of all, like in
14:40
Speaker 1: and traveled up and done the whole thing. I was
14:42
Speaker 1: hoping you weren't going to ask me that. No, I haven't.
14:44
Speaker 1: I haven't either. I did you know? It's it's Liberty
14:49
Speaker 1: Island now and there's Liberty State Park as part of
14:51
Speaker 1: the grounds. And I went to see radio Head there,
14:56
Speaker 1: uh in late August two thousand one, right there with
15:01
Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty looming and the Twin Towers right
15:04
Speaker 1: across the water. Good night, And of course, you know,
15:08
Speaker 1: it was just a couple of weeks after that that
15:10
Speaker 1: the Twin Towers were gone. It was very, uh surreal
15:14
Speaker 1: to have gone to that show at that moment in time.
15:17
Speaker 1: Uh and almost, well not almost twenty years ago, almost,
15:20
Speaker 1: meaning as we record, just a couple of days away. Right, So, chuck, Um,
15:27
Speaker 1: you haven't been to the set of Liberty either, I
15:29
Speaker 1: guess is ultimately the point of your story. No, just
15:31
Speaker 1: a Radiohead concert, Okay. So I don't feel particularly bad
15:36
Speaker 1: because I was reading a piece of contemporary journalism, uh,
15:41
Speaker 1: contemporary too when they restored the set of Liberty, which
15:44
Speaker 1: we'll talk about for a second later, um, and they
15:47
Speaker 1: were talking to the foreman, one of the foreman on
15:49
Speaker 1: the job, and he was saying, like, I've lived in
15:51
Speaker 1: New York for forty eight years, and it took me
15:53
Speaker 1: getting this job to come out here. I've never been here.
15:57
Speaker 1: So I think like a lot of people, including people
15:59
Speaker 1: who I think tourists, are the ones who have been
16:03
Speaker 1: to the Statue of Liberty. Not to say like I'm
16:06
Speaker 1: not a tourist when I go to New York, but right,
16:09
Speaker 1: it just makes me feel a little less bad that
16:11
Speaker 1: it's not like, what kind of an American are you
16:13
Speaker 1: haven't been to the Statue of Liberty? You call me? Yeah,
16:15
Speaker 1: And it kind of feels like and I'm completely wrong here,
16:18
Speaker 1: but it kind of feels like one of those where
16:20
Speaker 1: you're like, no, you know, I get a nice view
16:22
Speaker 1: of it from New York, and when I fly in
16:24
Speaker 1: and out, you get a really nice view of it.
16:26
Speaker 1: Like why do I need to actually go over there?
16:27
Speaker 1: But that should probably make the journey over there. We'll
16:30
Speaker 1: do it together holding their hands of fraternity, liberty, egality
16:36
Speaker 1: and podcaster. That's right, so uh Bert told he comes
16:41
Speaker 1: back to France. Oh yeah, forgot about. As the story goes,
16:45
Speaker 1: he attends a wedding and sees this young woman and
16:48
Speaker 1: it's like whoa ho ho who is that holding that?
16:52
Speaker 1: Everyone said, yeah, she had a hat box and everyone said,
16:56
Speaker 1: that's Jean Emily. How do you pronounce her last name? Uh?
17:00
Speaker 1: Bho bay Hugh. You were doing so good with the
17:05
Speaker 1: French b a h e u X. I know that
17:12
Speaker 1: last part would has to be you right, yeah or
17:15
Speaker 1: go oh baho? Where's going with ms B? Yeah, let's
17:23
Speaker 1: call her miss B And he said, I have finally
17:27
Speaker 1: met my lady Liberty. He goes on to Mary this
17:30
Speaker 1: woman and as legend has it, uh and I don't
17:34
Speaker 1: think he's ever confirmed from him, but his legend has
17:36
Speaker 1: it he used her as the body model for the
17:41
Speaker 1: Statue of Liberty and supposedly his mother Charlotte's face, which
17:46
Speaker 1: is you know, it introduces a certain level of Freudiani is, um, yeah,
17:50
Speaker 1: paging Dr Freud big time. My mom's face on my
17:54
Speaker 1: wife's body. Dave helped us out with this, uh, and
17:58
Speaker 1: he says that apparently his mother struck a stern, imposing figure,
18:03
Speaker 1: so that's why he chose his mother's face. You know,
18:07
Speaker 1: all right, we're just gonna go with that and just
18:09
Speaker 1: kind of slowly back out of this room. That's right.
18:13
Speaker 1: The next thing he needed to do after he had
18:14
Speaker 1: his artistic inspiration and his model was too you know,
18:19
Speaker 1: he didn't he's not a builder of things. He's he's well,
18:23
Speaker 1: he is a builder of things, but he's not an
18:24
Speaker 1: engineer and an architect on that level. Yeah, he was
18:27
Speaker 1: very much interested in that kind of stuff, but he
18:29
Speaker 1: was it was way beyond the scope of what he
18:31
Speaker 1: was capable of understanding himself. Yes, so he needed some
18:35
Speaker 1: help and he figured that first of all, this is
18:39
Speaker 1: the tallest statue in the world at the time, so
18:41
Speaker 1: it's going to be a challenge. And then what I
18:43
Speaker 1: want to do is build it in France and then
18:47
Speaker 1: take it apart and then rebuild it in the States.
18:51
Speaker 1: I kind of get this in a way, but I
18:55
Speaker 1: almost think that they could have gotten all the parts
18:58
Speaker 1: and shipped them to the United States to build on
19:00
Speaker 1: site for the first time. I mean, I kind of
19:04
Speaker 1: get where he was coming from, though. You don't want
19:06
Speaker 1: to send everything over and ending up being like Mr
19:09
Speaker 1: mccraig with a leg for an arm and an arm
19:11
Speaker 1: for a leg or something like that. You want to
19:13
Speaker 1: make sure it works first before you if you ask me.
19:18
Speaker 1: That shows it demonstrates the level of dedication that the
19:21
Speaker 1: French had to this gift to America. And my hat,
19:24
Speaker 1: my chef, how is off to them for it? Well,
19:27
Speaker 1: and I guess he figured because my whole logic was like,
19:30
Speaker 1: and you could do it in America and solve the
19:32
Speaker 1: same problems here as you could have solved there, but
19:35
Speaker 1: it would just be more embarrassing here in America. Well
19:39
Speaker 1: that but I think he was working with his people
19:41
Speaker 1: there and you can't bring all those people over, So
19:44
Speaker 1: that was I'm sure there was a comfort level and
19:46
Speaker 1: a language issue or barrier potentially that he wouldn't have
19:50
Speaker 1: to overcome, So I succumb I also think probably that
19:55
Speaker 1: he he was also using it as a way to
19:58
Speaker 1: drum up interest in in their for funds for it
20:01
Speaker 1: as well, because he had to raise money. We'll get
20:03
Speaker 1: to that. So um Bart totally uh talked to a
20:06
Speaker 1: couple of architects. The first one he spoke to was
20:09
Speaker 1: Eugene viole A l EDuke Uh He was a the
20:13
Speaker 1: greatest architect in France at the time, and he basically said, look,
20:16
Speaker 1: you want to use this technique called rape whose and
20:19
Speaker 1: it's basically what you're gonna do is build a skeleton
20:22
Speaker 1: or something of some sort, some sort of structure underneath
20:26
Speaker 1: that you can then attach thin sheets of copper too.
20:29
Speaker 1: So the sculpture is going to be made at copper,
20:31
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna be like cast or carved or
20:33
Speaker 1: anything like that. That's that's it would just be impossible
20:37
Speaker 1: to do. Um Instead, you're just going to fix copper
20:41
Speaker 1: sheets to it to make the thing out of And
20:43
Speaker 1: I guess viole A La Duke suggested making a concrete
20:48
Speaker 1: structure underneath, and um Bert totally was like, Okay, you know,
20:53
Speaker 1: I like you a lot. We've we've had a lot
20:55
Speaker 1: of great basketball games together, and um you're my friend,
20:58
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with your recommendation. But then val A
21:01
Speaker 1: Leduke died and he came another guy from our podcast history,
21:07
Speaker 1: Gustav e fel Or Eiffel there is created the Eiffel Tower.
21:12
Speaker 1: And he said, yet this is this is all wrong?
21:16
Speaker 1: Like yes, yes, he's like, I'm trying out some new things. Uh.
21:21
Speaker 1: He said, yes, I totally agree with val A Leeduke's
21:25
Speaker 1: idea to use ray puss. That was a stroke of genius.
21:27
Speaker 1: But the idea of like creating the structure underneath that
21:30
Speaker 1: a concrete that's way too heavy, way too rigid, and
21:34
Speaker 1: it's just totally unnecessary. Try out my new technique of
21:38
Speaker 1: trusses and girders made of wrought iron. It's gonna be
21:41
Speaker 1: way lighter and it's going to give it a lot
21:43
Speaker 1: more flexibility. Yeah. I think he kind of thought that,
21:46
Speaker 1: and I think it was probably right. Is that other
21:48
Speaker 1: way it was a little more old school, and that
21:50
Speaker 1: he saw the future, you know, pre Eiffel Tower. He
21:54
Speaker 1: was the future and wrought iron, I guess. So he
21:57
Speaker 1: was in love with those iron girders, and so he said,
21:59
Speaker 1: here's what do We'll design this giant nine two pylon
22:04
Speaker 1: and that'll be the central point from which everything will spring,
22:08
Speaker 1: and they'll be this more lightweight, uh kind of grid
22:12
Speaker 1: of girders and trusses that's going to form that skeleton
22:15
Speaker 1: from that central pylon and then a secondary another iron
22:20
Speaker 1: frame even and that's what those copper sheets are going
22:23
Speaker 1: to be riveted to, one at a time. And he said,
22:27
Speaker 1: this is the way, like you said, it's gonna have
22:29
Speaker 1: a little give, uh. And today even the statue of
22:32
Speaker 1: Liberty can can sway a bit, as all great tall
22:35
Speaker 1: structures usually are made to go a little bit with
22:38
Speaker 1: the wind. She can sway about three inches and like herself,
22:43
Speaker 1: and then the torch can sway up to six inches.
22:46
Speaker 1: You should see she sways even more if there's a
22:48
Speaker 1: good Calypso song playing nearby, right or you should have
22:50
Speaker 1: seen her at that radio Head show. She's getting down
22:54
Speaker 1: like I love this song song no booze at that show.
22:58
Speaker 1: That's what I remember, dude, does Radiohead ever get booed? No, no, no,
23:02
Speaker 1: no booze as an alcohol? Because it was it was
23:05
Speaker 1: a big surprise because it was a state park. So
23:07
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen thousand people show up and we're like,
23:10
Speaker 1: where's the beer line? And they're like, oh, there is
23:12
Speaker 1: no alcohol here. You can stand in line, but there's
23:14
Speaker 1: nothing at the other end of it, and so we're like,
23:16
Speaker 1: we're leaving. Then did everybody go booze? No? Yeah, there
23:21
Speaker 1: were booze after all, it was fine. We all lived
23:24
Speaker 1: for two hours without drinking. It was fine. That's amazing. Wow,
23:27
Speaker 1: that story just keeps getting more and more amazing. I know,
23:30
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of some more more fine points.
23:33
Speaker 1: I'll see if I can think of anything. A giant
23:35
Speaker 1: snake that wound its way through the audience and everyone
23:38
Speaker 1: thought it was going to attack everyone and kill him,
23:40
Speaker 1: but instead it bounce people up and crowd served with them. No,
23:44
Speaker 1: actually I did remember that. The end of that story
23:47
Speaker 1: is I happened to bump into my good friend Bill
23:49
Speaker 1: from it from college, who I didn't even know was there,
23:53
Speaker 1: and he had snuck some booze in. Oh boozy Bill
23:56
Speaker 1: was there. Boozy fills like a like a pint of
24:03
Speaker 1: whiskey or something, and fake binoculars. Yeah, exactly, man, I
24:08
Speaker 1: remember those. Those are great. Alright. So Eiffel says, this
24:12
Speaker 1: is the plan. The plans are approved. Eiffel himself supervised
24:17
Speaker 1: the construction of this tower and the extension tower that
24:22
Speaker 1: is gonna you know, end up being that right arm
24:24
Speaker 1: with a torch and that took about two years and
24:28
Speaker 1: they wounded up in three. But that was just Eiffel's
24:32
Speaker 1: contribution to just stuff. Yeah, no, no copper at this
24:35
Speaker 1: point at all. So um there, I mean like at
24:38
Speaker 1: this point they're like doing some cutting edge stuff. Um.
24:42
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons why it's cutting edges because
24:45
Speaker 1: no one's ever tried any of this before. Again, this
24:47
Speaker 1: is going there making the tallest statue in the world.
24:49
Speaker 1: They were using like engineering techniques and structures that were unproven.
24:55
Speaker 1: This was like, um, Eiffel completed his part six years
24:58
Speaker 1: before the Eiffel Tower debut. So this is new stuff,
25:02
Speaker 1: unproven and introduced to the world. It's pretty cool that
25:05
Speaker 1: they were doing that. But one of the first challenges
25:07
Speaker 1: they ran into was figuring out how to make this
25:13
Speaker 1: the the little you know, proof of concept tabletop sculptures
25:17
Speaker 1: that they had created, how to turn those scale models
25:21
Speaker 1: into the actual thing. Because nowadays, when you design, when
25:26
Speaker 1: you draw, it's on computers, and the computer exactly yeah
25:33
Speaker 1: with your elbow and go come on, stupid computer, right,
25:38
Speaker 1: these guys did not have anything remotely like that at
25:41
Speaker 1: their disposal. And when we tell you about how they
25:44
Speaker 1: went from those tabletop models to the actual statue of
25:48
Speaker 1: liberty yourself, Um, it's going to to blow your mind. Yeah.
25:53
Speaker 1: What they did have was brains and math and string
25:58
Speaker 1: and stick to itiveness and stick to it. Because I
26:01
Speaker 1: was like, right when it occurred to me, Chuck, if
26:03
Speaker 1: I were leading this thing, the moment it occurred to
26:05
Speaker 1: me what we had to do, I would just start crying, yeah,
26:10
Speaker 1: or we would just do our best and it would
26:13
Speaker 1: the proportions would be all wrong, come out like Mr mccraig,
26:15
Speaker 1: if we were lucky, who's Mr mccraig. What is that?
26:19
Speaker 1: It was like their doctor Nick um is talking to
26:22
Speaker 1: somebody and like one of his old patients shows up
26:26
Speaker 1: and he's like, Dr Nick, do you remember me? And
26:28
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, well, if it isn't my old friend
26:31
Speaker 1: Mr mccraig with the leg for an arm and an
26:34
Speaker 1: arm for a leg, this guy's got an arm for
26:39
Speaker 1: a leg and a leg. It was just demonstrating how
26:42
Speaker 1: bad Dr Nick was at his job. I love it,
26:44
Speaker 1: Hi frozen body. Yeah, all right, so they need to
26:48
Speaker 1: ambig in this thing and there's Simpson stuff flying a uh,
26:53
Speaker 1: and they've got a little tourist model like you said,
26:56
Speaker 1: and they're all sitting around with their hands on their chin,
26:58
Speaker 1: and they said, all right, why don't we do this,
27:01
Speaker 1: Why don't we gradually make it a little bit bigger.
27:03
Speaker 1: I think we can handle that. And so they you know,
27:07
Speaker 1: they have this thing called a pantograph. If you look
27:09
Speaker 1: it up online, it doesn't look like much, but it
27:12
Speaker 1: uses these little mechanical arms on boom like a boom
27:16
Speaker 1: to basically you can make something bigger or smaller from
27:20
Speaker 1: an original using this thing. Yeah, it enlarges the movements
27:23
Speaker 1: of the pencil or pen you're using to the larger
27:28
Speaker 1: to the pen that's attached on the other end of
27:31
Speaker 1: the boom. It just makes a bigger, exact copy. Yeah.
27:34
Speaker 1: So it's it's like, it's genius to use this, and
27:37
Speaker 1: they use bigger and bigger ones until they got up
27:39
Speaker 1: to about a one quarter size, which is really big
27:43
Speaker 1: and impressive. But that's at the point where they're like, hey, guys,
27:48
Speaker 1: I hate to break it to you, but that's it
27:50
Speaker 1: on the pantograph, Like this is as big as we
27:52
Speaker 1: can go. So from this one quarter size we're just
27:55
Speaker 1: gonna have to guess, right, Uh, we're gonna have to No,
28:01
Speaker 1: they figured out another really ingenious way to kind of
28:05
Speaker 1: measure up from there, and they took that that finished
28:09
Speaker 1: quarter size version. Yes, that that's the final scale model.
28:14
Speaker 1: The biggest that it got was the quarter size of
28:16
Speaker 1: the original or the final um. The final version um.
28:20
Speaker 1: They built of a structure like a frame around the maquette,
28:24
Speaker 1: and then they basically attached lines, plumb lines from the
28:28
Speaker 1: structure to the model at different points. Yeah, they used
28:33
Speaker 1: string basically, but in much the same way like you know,
28:35
Speaker 1: on like those cop procedurals like C S I or whatever,
28:38
Speaker 1: they'll have like the the red dowels like sticking out
28:41
Speaker 1: of bullet holes to figure out the trajectory. They basically
28:45
Speaker 1: did that with the Statue of Liberty, but in a
28:48
Speaker 1: thousand different locations, every fold, every toenail, every like eye
28:52
Speaker 1: eyelash like like everything. All of that stuff was plotted
28:57
Speaker 1: out in real life in three mentioned using plumb lines
29:02
Speaker 1: to to basically create these points of reference. And then
29:05
Speaker 1: they went back and they measured all of them and
29:08
Speaker 1: they figured out where all these points would go times four,
29:12
Speaker 1: and then they built another structure and went from there
29:15
Speaker 1: and then went went backwards. Yes, I really feel like
29:21
Speaker 1: I had it until the end there. Yeah, you kind
29:24
Speaker 1: of pettered it out at the end. Well, now they went,
29:25
Speaker 1: they went, They multiplied it by four, built the structure
29:28
Speaker 1: that could accommodate that, and then brought back down plumb
29:31
Speaker 1: lines to those four times larger points of reference and
29:35
Speaker 1: then started building from there. Yeah, it's a technique called
29:38
Speaker 1: pointing up. And all told, there were nine thousand measurements,
29:43
Speaker 1: three hundred main reference points, and then thousands of these
29:49
Speaker 1: pieces of string. Because like you said, it's it's every
29:52
Speaker 1: you know, they can't just get it close. It's every
29:54
Speaker 1: fold in her gown, every you know, you know, the
29:58
Speaker 1: the thumbnail meeting the thumb them. It's all like very
30:01
Speaker 1: very specific because they had to get it just right.
30:04
Speaker 1: And so then they have to start out building this thing.
30:08
Speaker 1: And what they decided to do, obviously is build it
30:10
Speaker 1: in sections because they're gonna have to take it apart
30:13
Speaker 1: and put it back together. So they built it in
30:16
Speaker 1: very large sections, uh, starting with wood scaffolding and then
30:22
Speaker 1: eventually uh, plaster, because you want to you know, you're
30:26
Speaker 1: you're sculpting. It can't just be wood and copper hammered
30:30
Speaker 1: on there like it's gotta be there's gotta be some
30:33
Speaker 1: fine detail and some really rounded smooth edges and stuff
30:37
Speaker 1: like that. Right, So they made basically wood molds molds
30:41
Speaker 1: out of wood, sculpture the plaster and it, and then
30:44
Speaker 1: they had a plaster mold, and then they could take
30:47
Speaker 1: the plaster mold, which was basically negative um. And then
30:51
Speaker 1: they put wood into the plaster molds and warped it
30:57
Speaker 1: so that it fits the plaster perfectly, kind of like
31:00
Speaker 1: the techniques um that you would used to make a
31:02
Speaker 1: boat hole, you know, smooth and folded. Um. They did
31:05
Speaker 1: the same thing with these giant plaster casts, but they
31:09
Speaker 1: did it with wood, and you think, okay, great wood,
31:12
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do with wood? Then with those
31:15
Speaker 1: wood molds that they made from the plaster casts, they
31:18
Speaker 1: took those thin sheets of copper that were about the
31:21
Speaker 1: size of two pennies held together. That's what the outside
31:25
Speaker 1: of the statue of Liberty is. That's the thickness of
31:28
Speaker 1: her skin. Um. They put those copper plates into the
31:33
Speaker 1: wood molds and then hammered them smooth, and now all
31:36
Speaker 1: of a sudden you had the final pieces of the
31:39
Speaker 1: exterior of Lady Liberty coming together, right, and several hundred
31:44
Speaker 1: pieces in the end. I mean, it's a big project.
31:49
Speaker 1: And if you think, boy, you better label that stuff
31:52
Speaker 1: good fellas, uh, you're right, because by the when this
31:56
Speaker 1: thing was eventually shipped over, it was a little bit annoying.
31:59
Speaker 1: And that what happened is what you think would probably happen.
32:03
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff gets mislabeled, and it wasn't quite
32:06
Speaker 1: armed for a leg territory, I don't think. But it
32:10
Speaker 1: was like, all right, now I gotta sift through this
32:12
Speaker 1: and kind of refigure it all over again. Yeah, I
32:15
Speaker 1: can't imagine. So I say, we take a break and
32:19
Speaker 1: come back, and we got to talk about money, everybody,
32:22
Speaker 1: So just sit tight, Okay, So all this is going
32:50
Speaker 1: on the copper. By the way, I feel like this
32:52
Speaker 1: guy's name bears repeating throughout the story or any time
32:56
Speaker 1: the story is told. Pierre Eugene Secretan was industrialist in
33:00
Speaker 1: France who donated the copper, really high quality copper we
33:04
Speaker 1: hear to the project. But that was you know, and
33:08
Speaker 1: there were other donations and there was other funds raised,
33:10
Speaker 1: but it was um, it was hard going. They found out.
33:15
Speaker 1: I get the impression that the French had an easier
33:17
Speaker 1: time because that Franco American union came together and they said, okay,
33:20
Speaker 1: how about this. The French will raise about two and
33:23
Speaker 1: fifty thousand francs about six million dollars for the statue itself,
33:28
Speaker 1: and the Americans will raise about two d and fifty
33:31
Speaker 1: thousand dollars about seven million dollars today um to to
33:36
Speaker 1: create the pedestal. And they basically said, ready break, and
33:40
Speaker 1: the French went off and started fundraising. The Americans went
33:42
Speaker 1: off and started fundraising, and I have the impression of
33:44
Speaker 1: the French had a little easier time of it than
33:47
Speaker 1: the Americans did. Yeah, it seems like it. I think
33:50
Speaker 1: the Americans probably thought at the beginning, like, hey, they
33:54
Speaker 1: just want us to pay for the pedestal, like this,
33:56
Speaker 1: this is nothing. It ended up being a little more
33:58
Speaker 1: expensive than the statue itself, so we were kind of
34:02
Speaker 1: left holding the bag by a little bit. Or the
34:05
Speaker 1: Americans were like, oh, I thought this was a gift. Yeah,
34:10
Speaker 1: you want to go Dutch. Great in the Dutch are like,
34:12
Speaker 1: what does that even mean? Yeah? The check comes, uh
34:15
Speaker 1: so yeah, that that bases it called the truncated pyramid
34:18
Speaker 1: which basically means a pyramid that doesn't have the pointy top. Uh,
34:23
Speaker 1: it gets smaller as it goes up. And it's that
34:25
Speaker 1: itself is eighty nine ft tall and sixty two ft
34:28
Speaker 1: wide and about forty ft wide at the top of
34:32
Speaker 1: that thing where she stands, and it is mostly concrete
34:37
Speaker 1: and it is Uh, it's got a facade of Connecticut granite.
34:40
Speaker 1: But that was a big project in and of itself.
34:42
Speaker 1: And yeah, Chuck, also, I was I was researching the pedestal.
34:45
Speaker 1: I found out there's eight beams in their eight structural
34:48
Speaker 1: beams poured into the conqueror the concrete poured around it.
34:51
Speaker 1: Four of them are horizontal, but then four towards the
34:54
Speaker 1: top are vertical, and they actually break the top of
34:56
Speaker 1: the pedestal, and that is what the uh interior. Your
35:00
Speaker 1: skeleton of the Statue of Liberty is affixed too, so
35:03
Speaker 1: she's like solidly affixed to that pedestal. It's pretty cool.
35:08
Speaker 1: That's awesome. So, like you said, the French, I think
35:11
Speaker 1: you're raising money at a steadier clip. Uh, they're selling
35:14
Speaker 1: tickets to lotteries. Schools were chipping in a little bit.
35:18
Speaker 1: I think there were descendants of French soldiers supposedly who
35:22
Speaker 1: had fallen in the American Revolution, that we're sending in
35:24
Speaker 1: some money. Yeah, that's that's old school right there, big time. Uh.
35:29
Speaker 1: They started this is this is kind of a good idea. Actually,
35:32
Speaker 1: they started having fundraising banquets as the structure was growing
35:37
Speaker 1: inside it, Like they had one in the kneecap, one
35:39
Speaker 1: of the thigh, one in the stomach, and then finally
35:41
Speaker 1: one inside the head. Great way to raise some money, right,
35:45
Speaker 1: which is what I was saying, Like, I think that's
35:47
Speaker 1: one of the reasons he built it in France first. Yeah,
35:51
Speaker 1: it makes sense, and then they did in turn. Eventually
35:54
Speaker 1: when this thing gets to America in pieces, they start
35:58
Speaker 1: doing that here. They start trotting this around on First
36:00
Speaker 1: they had I think the right arm and torch on
36:03
Speaker 1: display in Philadelphia for the centennial celebration, and then that
36:08
Speaker 1: same torch and armor at Madison Square Park and you
36:10
Speaker 1: could pay money to climb up in it and take
36:13
Speaker 1: a picture. Early couldn't take pictures and sketch pictures of it.
36:17
Speaker 1: And uh, the Americans held prize fights and they held
36:22
Speaker 1: auctions and stuff like that. So they were doing their best,
36:25
Speaker 1: but they were about a hundred grand short in the end,
36:28
Speaker 1: and that is when a man by the name of
36:31
Speaker 1: Joseph Pulitzer stepped up. I really like this idea, and
36:36
Speaker 1: he was like, you know what, we gotta we gotta
36:38
Speaker 1: get there. I had this rag called the World. It's
36:42
Speaker 1: got great circulation. And Dave points out he's dead right
36:45
Speaker 1: that this is kind of one of the biggest and
36:47
Speaker 1: first crowdfunding campaigns, and that he launched this big thing
36:51
Speaker 1: of where he was like, listen, this isn't the government.
36:55
Speaker 1: We don't want rich the government doing this, or the
36:58
Speaker 1: millionaires of France giving a gift to the millionaires of
37:00
Speaker 1: the United States. This is supposed to be for the
37:03
Speaker 1: common person. And so give a dollar, give twenty five cents,
37:08
Speaker 1: And that's what happened. All these people stepped up and
37:12
Speaker 1: gave a little tiny increments of money and they fundraised
37:16
Speaker 1: about a thousand dollars over their goal using that little
37:20
Speaker 1: crowdfunding technique, and just five months they've the whole past
37:24
Speaker 1: the goal. Yeah. The whole hook was if you give anything,
37:28
Speaker 1: I'll print your name in my newspaper. And it worked. Yeah,
37:31
Speaker 1: oh yeah, if you want to get anything done, offered
37:34
Speaker 1: to print people's name in the newspaper in a positive,
37:37
Speaker 1: positive light. That's a big caveat right there, right exactly.
37:40
Speaker 1: And there was one other thing. Uh, well, there's a
37:42
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that came out of the fundraising effort,
37:44
Speaker 1: but one of the most notable things that came out
37:47
Speaker 1: of it, Chuck, was the poem by M. Lazarus that
37:49
Speaker 1: we were referring to earlier. Um, she wrote this poem
37:54
Speaker 1: called the New Colossus, uh as kind of an homage
37:57
Speaker 1: or a tribute to this Statue of Liberty idea, it's
38:01
Speaker 1: in order to help raise funds for it, and then
38:04
Speaker 1: ended up being engraved on a plaque on Liberty Island
38:08
Speaker 1: at this at the base of the Statue of Liberty,
38:10
Speaker 1: I believe where it was installed, and I think nineteen
38:13
Speaker 1: o three, Yeah, that's when it finally wash was inscribed.
38:17
Speaker 1: But I think that's kind of cool, like she just
38:19
Speaker 1: submitted this as part of the fundraising auction and it
38:23
Speaker 1: ended up being those immortal words. So the hat is
38:26
Speaker 1: off to MLAs Verus as well the spiky crown. That's right.
38:31
Speaker 1: So um, Okay, we get to the point where, um,
38:35
Speaker 1: the pieces have been made, they've been assembled together in France,
38:41
Speaker 1: fundraising banquets have been held in them. They had to
38:43
Speaker 1: get all the old cigar butts and everything out before
38:45
Speaker 1: they put them in shipping crates mislabeled shipping crates no less,
38:50
Speaker 1: And Bart told he goes um to help oversee the
38:53
Speaker 1: reassembly himself, and um, it's put up, and I believe so.
39:01
Speaker 1: Five to October June five is when the shipping containers
39:06
Speaker 1: show up uh in UH in the harbor in New York.
39:10
Speaker 1: And then um on October six is when the UH
39:16
Speaker 1: the statue is dedicated. And in between three D fifty
39:20
Speaker 1: sheets massive sheets of copper that make up the external
39:24
Speaker 1: skin of the set of Liberty were put together using
39:27
Speaker 1: three three thousand copper rivets, lots of steam, shovels, tons
39:32
Speaker 1: of labor. It was just a huge effort. That was
39:35
Speaker 1: probably the fastest part of this whole project. Yeah, and
39:40
Speaker 1: it was, you know, once they figured out those miss
39:42
Speaker 1: uh mislabeled crates, it was it took a while, but
39:46
Speaker 1: it seemed to go pretty smoothly at least from there.
39:49
Speaker 1: And I also saw, well, I saw a chuck. They
39:51
Speaker 1: figured out very quickly that the arm holding the torch
39:55
Speaker 1: and the head were misaligned and they're not sure what happened,
40:00
Speaker 1: they think it is. One of the theories is I read,
40:03
Speaker 1: is that um Bert totally was not happy with how
40:06
Speaker 1: the statue looked or was going to look based on
40:10
Speaker 1: creating it in France, and had it purposefully miss a
40:14
Speaker 1: line to basically change it's it's look a little bit
40:17
Speaker 1: it's appearance. So interesting. Yeah, alright, So on October they
40:22
Speaker 1: have despite it being a rainy day, they had about
40:25
Speaker 1: a million people turn out for this parade down Broadway
40:29
Speaker 1: and then this eventual dedication ceremony there as still known
40:33
Speaker 1: as Bedloe Island and Bartoli was the guest of honor.
40:38
Speaker 1: And this is just kind of a funny way to
40:39
Speaker 1: to end this story. Is he was up in the
40:43
Speaker 1: crown and he has a big French flag covering up
40:47
Speaker 1: her face, and at the right moment he's cued by
40:51
Speaker 1: someone down below. He's supposed to whip this thing off
40:54
Speaker 1: at the end of the big speech from the chair
40:56
Speaker 1: of the American Committee, and he was he was tipped,
41:00
Speaker 1: was signaled a little bit early, and the chair of
41:02
Speaker 1: the American Committee was still giving that speech when Bartotli
41:06
Speaker 1: dropped this flag and no one cared. The cannons went off,
41:10
Speaker 1: everyone went crazy. Steam whistles are blowing in the harbor.
41:14
Speaker 1: Brass band goes off, and the chair of the American
41:17
Speaker 1: committee was like, all right, I guess, uh, who cares.
41:20
Speaker 1: I'll just finish that later, right, the confession I had
41:23
Speaker 1: prepared will just go onheard, I guess, But nobody cared.
41:26
Speaker 1: And it was it was a big, grand success, yea.
41:29
Speaker 1: And I believe from the time that, uh it was
41:33
Speaker 1: dedicated in eight six, just to um fourteen million immigrants
41:41
Speaker 1: passed by Lady Liberty. She definitely did her job right
41:45
Speaker 1: out of the gate. That's right. They passed by that
41:48
Speaker 1: copper colored structure. Yeah, at least at first at first,
41:52
Speaker 1: and that was all planned. You know, copper is going
41:55
Speaker 1: to oxidize and it's going to form that patina to
41:58
Speaker 1: protect that copper. And everyone knew that she would eventually
42:00
Speaker 1: turn green? Did they? Did everyone know that? Well, everyone
42:04
Speaker 1: who knew anything about copper, I mean, the builders knew it.
42:07
Speaker 1: And that was part of the whole thing, was that copper,
42:09
Speaker 1: once it gets this pattina will last forever. But yeah,
42:12
Speaker 1: there probably were some shmows in New York that were like,
42:15
Speaker 1: why is it turning green? Uh? And it happened. There's
42:18
Speaker 1: no direct date, but um, there are photos from as
42:22
Speaker 1: early as nineteen o six, which is only about twenty
42:24
Speaker 1: years later, where that Pattina is, where she's she's pretty
42:28
Speaker 1: green at that point. And I think at this point
42:31
Speaker 1: in places on that statue that Pattina is as thick
42:34
Speaker 1: as that copper. It's two twopennies deep. So now it's
42:37
Speaker 1: four pennies deep in some places. So do you remember
42:40
Speaker 1: when we were younger, in the mid eighties, there was
42:42
Speaker 1: like this, the restoration project of the statue. I was
42:47
Speaker 1: under the impression that they were going to clean the
42:49
Speaker 1: green off of it, not I don't remember. I don't remember.
42:55
Speaker 1: I don't think I was under the impression. There's a
42:57
Speaker 1: reference in in seinfeld Um about how remember George goes
43:02
Speaker 1: to work for Krueger Industrial Smoothing, and they referenced that
43:06
Speaker 1: that Krueger was the company that botched the Statue of
43:09
Speaker 1: Liberty restoration job. So like I have the impression that
43:13
Speaker 1: other people think that it was supposed to be cleaned
43:15
Speaker 1: of its green color as well during that But regardless
43:19
Speaker 1: during I think so too. I think seeing the set
43:21
Speaker 1: of Liberties anything but that aged copper green weird. But
43:27
Speaker 1: during that restoration, whether they were trying to clean the
43:29
Speaker 1: green off or not. UM, they found a few things
43:32
Speaker 1: about it. They found the torch was irreparably weathered, and
43:35
Speaker 1: so the torch that she's holding now is new. It's
43:38
Speaker 1: the second version that created using the exact same methods
43:42
Speaker 1: as the original one. UM, but they replaced the torch.
43:46
Speaker 1: And then they also found that a lot of Eiffel's
43:50
Speaker 1: um wrought iron structure, a lot of it was rusting
43:54
Speaker 1: and falling apart, so they replaced all of those with
43:56
Speaker 1: stainless steel. So she got like a really good refresh
44:01
Speaker 1: and update in nineteen six thanks to a committee led
44:06
Speaker 1: by Leaya Coca who was appointed by President Reagan. Very few,
44:10
Speaker 1: very few um uh sentences that are more eighties than that.
44:15
Speaker 1: And then also we know that the restoration UM worked
44:19
Speaker 1: at least until the year thirty nine seventy eight thanks
44:22
Speaker 1: to the Planet of the Apes movies or depending on
44:27
Speaker 1: who you ask, you're gonna love that spoiler in there. Dude,
44:31
Speaker 1: it's a movie from ninety eight, I know, I can
44:35
Speaker 1: you really spoil that? Sure? One of the great endings. Uh. Now,
44:39
Speaker 1: about three to four million people a year visit Lady
44:42
Speaker 1: Liberty and you can get in an elevator there on
44:45
Speaker 1: that ground level to the top of the pedestal, and
44:49
Speaker 1: you can go all the way up to the crown,
44:50
Speaker 1: even if you make a reservation apparently, but the elevator
44:53
Speaker 1: doesn't go that high. They're about a hundred and sixty
44:55
Speaker 1: two steps that will get you there and uh and
45:00
Speaker 1: you can look out of that crown. Imagine that's quite
45:01
Speaker 1: a site. And time was that they would just sell
45:04
Speaker 1: tickets without reservations and you just buy your tickets and
45:06
Speaker 1: stand there in line to wait for the people who
45:08
Speaker 1: went up to come back down because there was not
45:10
Speaker 1: a lot of room on that that staircase. And now
45:13
Speaker 1: at least they're like, you know, really innovating since nineteen
45:16
Speaker 1: six by offering advanced reservations. Apparently it was miserable. So
45:23
Speaker 1: one other fact about the statue of Liberty Chuck that
45:25
Speaker 1: stuck out to me was she started out as the
45:28
Speaker 1: world's tallest statue when she was built and dedicated, but
45:32
Speaker 1: today she's just number forty seven among the world's tallest statues,
45:36
Speaker 1: which means we've built a lot of really tall statues
45:39
Speaker 1: in the last hundred years. It's something that humanity has
45:41
Speaker 1: been really interested in apparently, that's right. And if anyone
45:45
Speaker 1: ever says, yeah, I've been there, I stood climbed up
45:49
Speaker 1: in the right next to the torch, you call that
45:51
Speaker 1: person a liar. Because no one's been allowed in that
45:54
Speaker 1: torch since nineteen sixty. They may be thinking crown, yeah,
45:59
Speaker 1: you and be allowed in the torch again until the year.
46:05
Speaker 1: That's right. Then you can do whatever you want because
46:07
Speaker 1: because the torch is just laying there on the beach. Basically,
46:10
Speaker 1: he finally did it. You darn maniacs. Okay, well, Chuck
46:17
Speaker 1: has nothing else. I have nothing else. And since I
46:19
Speaker 1: just said you darn maniacs, it's time for a listener mail.
46:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna called this short and sweet. Oh I like
46:26
Speaker 1: this from a from a younger like Humpty dumpty. That's right. Hey, guys,
46:31
Speaker 1: I am fourteen years old from northern Utah and I've
46:34
Speaker 1: been listening to you guys for a while and really
46:35
Speaker 1: enjoy your podcast. It's really fun to listen to what
46:38
Speaker 1: spunky things you have to say. I love the use
46:41
Speaker 1: of spunky there. I listened all the time during car
46:44
Speaker 1: rides are doing crafts and art. If you would mind,
46:47
Speaker 1: I would love it if you read my letter for
46:49
Speaker 1: my siblings and say she during listener mail, how's at
46:56
Speaker 1: the bomb? Usually don't honor requests. I know I'm below,
47:01
Speaker 1: like my socks are just down around my toes right now.
47:05
Speaker 1: But Alyssa Stewart just sounded like a nice kid, and
47:09
Speaker 1: sometimes it's it's good to kind of one up those siblings.
47:13
Speaker 1: So to the siblings of Alyssa who Elyssa didn't include,
47:16
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say one thing to you. She Wow, Chuck,
47:21
Speaker 1: I think you just like fundamentally altered Thanksgiving If that happs? Yeah,
47:26
Speaker 1: birth order out the door, cool order reset. Well, if
47:32
Speaker 1: you want the cool order in your family, reset, take
47:34
Speaker 1: your best shot. I'll be surprised if we do it again.
47:37
Speaker 1: But then Chuck's always full of surprises, so you never
47:40
Speaker 1: can tell. Can't get a bead on that one, you
47:42
Speaker 1: know what I mean. In the meantime, you can send
47:45
Speaker 1: those requests to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
47:52
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
47:55
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