Lady Liberty opted to go green long before most New Yorkers. In 1885, French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi dismantled his gleaming copper-skinned creation — a gift to the U.S. from the French people — into 350 pieces for its voyage across the Atlantic. The statue was eventually rebuilt atop Bedloe’s Island (now called Liberty Island) in New York Harbor, but during the next two decades or so, the landmark underwent a prominent color change. 

Thomas Edison wanted the Statue of Liberty to talk.

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After completing his design for the phonograph in 1877, the prolific inventor wanted to install one inside Lady Liberty. Edison envisioned a statue that could deliver speeches at a volume that reached Manhattan’s northernmost edge.

The now-familiar minty tint is actually a patina, a common coating that forms on copper as well as its alloys brass and bronze. The patina is a result of the chemical reactions the statue has endured in its environment, an urban center surrounded by water. Over the years, the copper has reacted to oxygen, sulfuric acid, chloride, and other components of the surrounding air and water, changing its mineral composition in a gradual evolution. Today, chemists believe the seafoam-green hue has stabilized. And while there’s occasionally been talk of repainting the statue or polishing off her patina, public sentiment — and input from copper manufacturers — has kept “Liberty Enlightening the World” from being returned to her initial metallic sheen. Fortunately, the patina is protective, which means Liberty’s chameleonlike qualities actually help preserve her.

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New Jersey is known for its beach boardwalks, saltwater taffy, and colonial American history. But many people don’t know that the tiny East Coast state was also once home to Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s eldest brother and the former king of Naples and Spain. How the royal went from governing entire countries to living in the New Jersey countryside is thanks to his brother’s military conquests. After abdicating the French throne in 1814, Napoleon escaped exile and attempted to retake his former role. However, the campaign ended with the Battle of Waterloo, where his troops were defeated by the British. Knowing his brother would likely return to exile, Joseph Bonaparte feared he was also at risk of banishment. His solution: to flee Europe, in disguise, by way of a ship heading to New York. 

Napoleon was afraid of cats.

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The famed military general is sometimes said to have had ailurophobia, a fear of cats, but historians say there’s no evidence to support the claim. Napoleon may have simply been lumped together with other conquerors said to fear cats, such as Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.

In America, Bonaparte spent time in Philadelphia among other French expatriates before settling along the Delaware River in Bordentown, New Jersey. In 1816, he began construction of Point Breeze, an enormous estate once said to rival the White House. Situated between New York and Philadelphia, the 1,800-acre estate included a 38,000-square-foot mansion, sculpture gardens, carriage trails, bridges, and a human-made lake — which attracted prominent visitors such as John Quincy Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette. At the time, Bonaparte’s personal library was larger than the Library of Congress and he maintained the largest private art collection in the U.S. — both of which, along with the grounds, were often open for public enjoyment. Bonaparte left Point Breeze in 1839 for London and today little of the estate survives, but in 2021 the City of Bordentown (with help from the state government and nonprofit groups) purchased the remains of Bonaparte’s retreat and transformed it into a new city municipal complex.

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The day after Thanksgiving is known for the deluge of holiday shoppers that descends on stores for serious savings. Some will tell you that the term “Black Friday” originally referred to the bottom lines of these stores, as the day of skyrocketing sales sent them out of the “red” (losing money) and into the “black” (making money) — hence, “Black Friday.” However, the origins of the phrase are a bit murkier. The first known use of “Black Friday” to describe the day after Thanksgiving comes from the November 1951 issue of the page-turning magazine Factory Management and Maintenance. In it, a writer hyperbolically describes the day as “a disease second only to the bubonic plague in its effects. At least that’s the feeling of those who have to get production out, when the ‘Black Friday’ comes along. The shop may be half empty, but every absentee was sick.” In other words, “Black Friday” wasn’t about hordes of shoppers pulsing through stores, but weary (and possibly hungover) factory workers calling in sick.

Thanksgiving is celebrated only in the U.S.

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Many nations around the world reserve a day on the calendar to give thanks. For example, Canada celebrates its Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October (and yes, Canadians also eat turkeys). Other nations around the world similarly give thanks but with varying traditions.

Although this is the first recorded use of the term, it’s unlikely that this version is what eventually became known across the U.S. as “Black Friday” in the late 20th century. Our modern sense of the term likely originated elsewhere in the 1950s, when Philadelphia cops began using “Black Friday” to describe the traffic mayhem of shoppers and sports fans descending on the city after Thanksgiving and before the Army-Navy football game on Saturday. Philadelphia stores tried to change the name to “Big Friday” but failed, and instead transformed the day’s negative connotation into a positive one, and the idea of “Black Friday” as a day of financial solvency was born.

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In his 100 years on Earth, Jimmy Carter set a number of records and achieved almost as many firsts. In addition to being the longest-living president in U.S. history, he was also the first one born in a hospital — an event that occurred on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. It was much more common for babies to be born at home in the early 20th century than it is now, but Carter’s mother was a nurse at what was then known as Wise Sanitarium, and there happened to be a room available on that fateful October night.

Every president has been married.

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One president never married: James Buchanan, who held the highest office in the land from 1857 to 1861. Grover Cleveland was a bachelor when he was elected in 1884, but later tied the knot (to Frances Folsom) in the White House — the only president to do so.

All five presidents born after Carter — Joe Biden (1942), Donald Trump (1946), George W. Bush (1946), Bill Clinton (1946), and Barack Obama (1961) — were likewise born in hospitals. George H. W. Bush, who was born less than four months before Carter and assumed the presidency 12 years after Carter, was born at home in Milton, Massachusetts.

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