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Statue of Liberty, New York > 
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if people in France gave the United States a great monument as a lasting memorial to independence and thereby showed that the French government was also dedicated to the idea of human liberty?"
The Dream Accomplished
On October 25, 1886, Bartholdi and his wife, accompanied by Count Ferdinand-Marie de Lesseps, chairman of the French Committee, arrived in America. They were greeted by the American Committee and Joseph Pulitzer. At Bedloe's Island, surrounded by newspaper reporters recording his words for posterity, Bartholdi simply said, "The dream of my life is accomplished."
The Unveiling of "The Lady"
Unveiling day - October 28, 1886 - was a public holiday. It was also rainy and foggy, but the weather could not dampen the spirits of the more than 1 million people who lined New York's bunting- and French-tricolor-draped streets to watch a parade of more than 20,000 pass by. Wall Street was the only area of the city working that day. The New York Times reported that as the parade passed by, the office boys "… from a hundred windows began to unreel the spools of tape that record the fateful messages of the 'ticker.' In a moment the air was white with curling streamers." And so the famous New York ticker-tape parade was born.
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