How Much Do You Know About The Statue Of Liberty Could You Pass A Quiz

Question: How astronomical a pencil-neck trivia geek are you?

Answer a series of forehead-slapping anecdotal factoids. It’s up to you to weigh each fact in each anecdotal factoid. They’re tricky. One might seem like total B.S. until it’s revealed to be strangely and disturbingly “True.” Another anecdotal factoid might seem to contain all solid and verifiable facts until it’s revealed to be yet one more big fat garden variety “Bald-Faced Lie.” And here’s the trickiest part: an anecdotal factoid might even be “Half-True“; in other words, a mishmosh of truths and bald-faced lies, where you don’t know where one ends and the other begins, much like the usual slop served by Madison Avenue, Washington D.C., and the Internet in its entirety.

Category: That Spacious Woman standing in the harbor for no apparent reason

Resolve for yourself, and mark “T” for “Truth”, “F” for “Bald-Faced Lie” or “TF” for “Half-Truth” in the blank slot next to each factoid.

The answers will be revealed in a follow-up “Answers” article.

1) __ In 1867, Egypt’s viceroy Ismail Pasha visited France and met with French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi who proposed a giant statue of a “robed woman holding a torch” erected at the mouth of the nearly completed Suez Canal. While the Pasha was eager about the project, Egypt didn’t have the money to finance it. Bartholdi went on to propose his giant statue of a “robed woman holding a torch” to his native France for a gift to America, The Statue of Liberty.

2) __ At the time of the Revolutionary War, the Statue of Liberty’s home, Bedloe’s Island, was seized by the British, who used the island as a place of refuge for Tory (English) sympathizers. Descendants of these Tories lived on Bedloe’s Island for decades until the U.S. government claimed eminent domain and moved them off the island in order for the ground to be broken for the Statue of Liberty. There was a brief armed resistance, and several people were arrested. One was wounded.

3) __ In 1916, the Statue of Liberty’s copper-plated torch was redesigned. The new do by Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum included 600 pieces of yellow cathedral glass. Borglum originally proposed replacing the torch with an illuminated flaming cross, but his plan was rejected. In later years, it was revealed that Borglum was a member in good standing of the Ku Klux Klan.

4) __ Also in 1916, during World War I, German agents attempted to blow up the Statue of Liberty. The Bedloe’s Island explosion killed four people. At the time, the United States was a neutral power. The reason for this act of sabotage: the German government felt that the United States was secretly supplying arms to the British.

Shards of shrapnel are still embedded in the Statue of Liberty.

5) __ The Statue of Liberty was originally intended as a monument to the raze of slavery in America. The idea began at a dinner party in the home of Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French abolitionist.

(see part two for answers)