Bellport High School United States History and Government classes visited New York City to tour Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
Serving as a beacon of light to legal immigrants who eventually became United States citizens via Ellis Island, Bellport students saw firsthand the historic poem etched inside the Statue of Liberty, titled “The New Colossus:”
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from France and was dedicated on October 28th, 1886.
National Geographic offered these “fast facts” about the Statue of Liberty:
• The statue sways 3 inches (7.62 centimeters) in the wind; the torch sways 5 inches (12.7 centimeters).
• Visitors climb 354 steps (22 stories) to look out from 25 windows in the crown.
• The statue—151 feet, 1 inch (46 meters, 2.5 centimeters) tall—was the tallest structure in the U.S. at that time.
• Engineer Gustave Eiffel, who would later design the Eiffel Tower in Paris, designed Liberty’s “spine.” Inside the statue four huge iron columns support a metal framework that holds the thin copper skin.
• Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi knew he wanted to build a giant copper goddess; he used his mother as the model.
• The statue is covered in 300 sheets of coin-thin copper. They were hammered into different shapes and riveted together.
• The arm with the torch measures 46 feet (14 meters); the finger, 8 feet (2.4 meters); the nose, nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters).
• Seven rays in the crown represent the Earth’s seven seas.