The Statue of Liberty was a shiny reddish brown, like a new penny.
It turned green within about twenty years of its 1886 dedication, and that patina now protects it from corrosion.
More amazing facts
- 1885 Peru's Day of Medicine honours a student who infected himself for science.
- 1886 Coca-Cola was invented by a pharmacist as a medicine.
- 1887 · 1888 The pneumatic tyre was invented by a vet for his son's tricycle.
- 1887 Queen Victoria went to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
- 1888 · 1896 · 1901 Alfred Nobel read his own obituary eight years before he died.
- 1888 · 1997 A woman who met Van Gogh lived into the internet age. Jeanne Calment recalled the painter visiting her uncle's shop in Arles in 1888; she died in 1997 aged 122, the longest confirmed human life.