Why Is the Statue of Liberty Green? The Year America Almost Painted Her | The Reason Behind Facts

Why is the Statue of Liberty green? When she was dedicated in 1886, she was not green at all. Her copper skin, only about 2.4 millimeters thick, shone a warm reddish-brown, like a brand-new penny. Within about 15 years she had darkened to brown, and by around 1920 she was green from crown to robe. Sea spray, rain and the sulfur of a coal-burning city slowly turned the copper into a thin crust of minerals, mostly brochantite. In 1906, Congress set aside about 62,000 dollars for repairs, and the plan included painting her inside and out. Newspapers called it sacrilege. Government engineers studied the green and found that it was protecting the copper. Only the inside was painted. Over about a century, the copper lost only about 0.005 of an inch. The real danger was hiding inside. Gustave Eiffel had placed a thin layer soaked in shellac between the copper skin and his iron skeleton. Over the decades it failed, and the iron bars rusted. In the 1984 to 1986 restoration, about 1,350 iron bars were replaced with stainless steel. ● Sources: National Park Service "Statue Statistics" and "Restoring the Statue", Wikipedia "Statue of Liberty", History.com "The Statue of Liberty Wasn't Always Green", Copper Development Association "Reclothing the First Lady of Metals" ● The pictures are AI-made illustrations of the story, not real photographs of the people or places. If this gave you a small "aha" moment, a like and subscribe would mean a lot. Chapters 0:00 The Plan to Paint the Statue of Liberty 0:34 A Copper Statue Made in Paris 2:28 The Pennies Behind the Pedestal 3:12 How the Copper Turned Green 4:18 1906: Paint Over the Green? 5:23 The Danger Inside the Statue #StatueOfLiberty #Copper #Patina #History #NewYork #Documentary #TheReasonBehindFacts