Celebrations Today – June 19
Holidays and observances
- Christian feast day:
- Day of the Independent Hungary (Hungary)
- Feast of Forest (Palawan)
- Juneteenth (United States, especially African Americans)
- Labour Day (Trinidad and Tobago)
- Laguna Day (Laguna)
- Never Again Day (Uruguay)
- Surigao del Norte Day (Surigao del Norte)
- Surigao del Sur Day (Surigao del Sur)
- World Sickle Cell Day (International)
- World Sauntering Day
Celebrations Today – USA: June 19
National Martini Day
National Garfield the Cat Day
National Juneteenth
National Eat an Oreo Day
National Pets in Film Day
World Sauntering Day
World Sickle Cell Day
Today in US History: June 19
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty arrived at its permanent home at Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor on June 19, 1885, aboard the French frigate Isere. A gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, the 151-foot-tall statue was created to commemorate the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence. Designed by sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi and officially titled Liberty Enlightening the World, the Statue of Liberty has symbolized freedom and democracy to the nation and to the world for over 120 years.
Statue of Liberty,
Photograph 233: General View of Statue Looking Northwest,
Liberty Island, Manhattan, New York, New York County, NY,
Jack Boucher, photographer, 1984.
Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present
Statue of Liberty,
Thomas A. Edison, Inc.,
1898.
The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906
The statue is constructed of hand-shaped copper sheets, assembled on a framework of steel supports designed by engineers Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. For transit to America, the figure was broken down into 350 separate pieces and packed in 214 crates. The Statue of Liberty sits within the star-shaped walls of the former Fort Wood, rising to a height of 305 feet on a pedestal designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt. The pedestal was built using funds raised by the American people through benefits, charity auctions, and individual donations—some as small as a few pennies each.
The Statue of Liberty faces to the east, greeting incoming ships on their arrival while also looking back toward her birthplace in France. President Grover Cleveland dedicated the statue on October 28, 1886, before thousands of spectators. With the 1892 opening of the nearby Ellis Island Immigration Station, Bartholdi’s Liberty would welcome more than 12 million immigrants to the United States. Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus,” originally composed in 1883 as part of the national fundraising effort, was affixed to the statue’s pedestal in 1903. Its poignant lines celebrate America’s role as a haven to peoples of the world in search of freedom:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” 1883.
Statue of Liberty,
Photograph 183: Detail of Fingers Holding Torch
Liberty Island, Manhattan, New York, New York County, NY,
Jet Lowe, photographer, 1985.
Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present
Statue of Liberty,
Photograph 192: New Torch and Flame in Place; Workers Beginning to Dismantle Scaffolding,
Jet Lowe, photographer, 1985.
Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present
For his 1949 Broadway musical Miss Liberty, Irving Berlin, himself an immigrant from Russia, set music to Emma Lazarus’s iconic poem. It is the only song in the Irving Berlin canon for which he used someone else’s words.
First designated a monument in 1924 and transfered to the National Park Service’s care in 1933, the Statue of Liberty National Monument’s boundaries expanded in 1956 to include both the renamed Liberty Island and Ellis Island within a single site. Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, the Statue of Liberty underwent a major restoration for its own centennial, in 1986.
“L-I-B-E-R-T-Y,”
Ted S. Barron, words and music,
New York: Metropolis Music, 1916.
Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
- Twelve years after the statue’s installation, Thomas Edison’s motion picture company filmed the Statue of Liberty. This film is available online through The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906. Browse the list of film titles to find other views of the city at the turn of the century.
- By World War I, the Statue of Liberty was firmly established as an American icon. Search Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920 on Statue of Liberty to examine sheet music illustrated with images of Lady Liberty. See, for example, “Good-Bye Broadway, Hello France” published in 1917.
- Search on the term Bartholdi in the collection The Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals to find articles concerning the “Bartholdi Colossus.” Read, for example, a brief article entitled “The Inauguration of Bartholdi’s Liberty Statue” which the journal Manufacturer and Builder carried in its November 1886 issue. Search the same collection on the name Lazarus to learn more about the poet’s interest in immigration issues.
- The American Memory collections include many pictures of the landmark. To find them, search across the collections featuring Photos, Prints on the term Statue of Liberty.
The Marshall Plan
It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.George C. Marshall, secretary of state,
“Address At Harvard University,” June 5, 1947.
For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan
On June 19, 1947, the British and French foreign ministers issued a joint communiqué inviting twenty-two European nations to send representatives to Paris to participate in designing a plan for rebuilding war-torn Europe. In his Harvard University commencement address two weeks earlier, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall had called for a massive European aid package designed to stabilize the world economy and discourage the spread of communism. More than 12.4 billion dollars were transferred to Western Europe under the Economic Recovery Program known as the “Marshall Plan.” Not completely altruistic, the legislationcreating the plan specified that aid dollars be spent in the U.S.
Nearly every Western European nation participated in the recovery plan. Although inflation was a serious side effect of the program, within two years many countries had reached or exceeded pre-war levels of agricultural and industrial production. By encouraging European economic integration, the Marshall Plan fostered the creation of the European Economic Community of the 1950s—the precursor to today’s European Union.
Photo collage,
For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan
- For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan, an online exhibition on the Marshall Plan, includes the text of three books about the Marshall Plan as well as William Averill Harriman’s photograph album, The Marshall Plan at the Mid-Mark.
- A Guide to World War II Materials provides links to World War II-related resources in the Library of Congress as well as to external sites.
- A search on Marshall Plan in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog yields posters and cartoons displaying sentiments of the time.
- Search the collection Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Years on World War II to locate WWII materials unique to the Library of Congress.
- Search the Today in History Archive on World War II to learn more about the war that so shaped the second half of the twentieth century. Read, for example, about Stalin’s memo pressuring the Allies to open a second front against Hitler in Europe.
Today in History – June 19-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia