Why the Statue of Liberty Was Rotting From the Inside

For almost a hundred years, the Statue of Liberty looked fine from the harbor. Her copper skin had barely worn away. Inside, the iron skeleton holding that skin up was rusting apart, and the statue herself was the cause. This is the story of how copper, iron and salty harbor air turned her into a slow battery, why nobody noticed for decades, and how a team in the 1980s replaced nearly every bone in her body while she kept standing. Along the way they found something nobody expected at her right shoulder, and a 2018 discovery in Paris added a new clue. The Statue of Liberty turns 140 on October 28, 2026. CHAPTERS 0:00 The statue was eating itself 1:04 A shell thinner than two pennies 1:44 Who holds her up? 2:20 Eiffel's skeleton 3:18 A battery made of copper and iron 4:03 The barrier fails 4:29 Rust that feeds itself 4:55 Why nobody saw it 5:49 The inspection 6:41 The arm in the wrong place 7:56 Wrapping her up 8:35 Down to bare metal 9:16 Replacing the skeleton 10:46 A new torch 11:10 Reopening, and the test still running 11:41 140 years Photos and film: HAER / Library of Congress (Jet Lowe, Jack Boucher, Frank DePalo), NYPL, BnF, NPS, White House Photographic Office, Wikimedia Commons contributors (Daniel Schwen, Christian David, Jakub Hałun, Rhododendrites; CC BY / CC BY-SA 4.0), Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1898, Library of Congress), Prelinger Archives. Full credits are on screen. The narration uses an AI-generated voice. 3D and 2D illustrations are computer-generated and labeled on screen; archive photos and film are real and dated.