In a ceremony held in Paris the completed Statue of Liberty
was formally presented to the United States ambassador as
a commemoration of the friendship between France and the
U.S.

The idea for the statue was born in 1865, when the French
historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye proposed
a monument to commemorate the upcoming centennial of
U.S. independence (1876), the perseverance of American
democracy and the liberation of the nation’s slaves.

Work on the statue, formally called “Liberty Enlightening
the World,” began in France in 1875.

Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye
(18 January 1811 – 25 May 1883)

On June 17, 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty, a gift of
friendship from the people of France to the people of America,
arrived in New York Harbor after being shipped across the
Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces packed in more than
200 cases. The copper and iron statue, which was reassembled
and dedicated the following year in a ceremony presided over
by U.S. President Grover Cleveland, became known around the
world as an enduring symbol of freedom and democracy.

The statue was originally copper-colored, but over the years it
underwent a natural color-change process called patination that produced its current greenish-blue hue.

The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of  France
to the people of the U.S. was dedicated in New York Harbor by then
President Grover Cleveland.

SANDY KOZEL

Dick Clark (Richard Wagstaff Clark)
(November 30, 1929 – April 18, 2012)

The original ABC network debut of American Bandstand began
on this day in 1957 and continued until 1987.