The Statue of Liberty
In the mid-1870s, French artist Frederic August Bartholdi was working on
an enormous project called Liberty Enlightening the World,
a monument celebrating US independence and the France-America alliance.
At the same time, he was in love with a woman whom he had met in Canada.
His mother could not approve of her son's affection for a woman she had never met,
but Bartholdi went ahead and married his love in 1876.
That same year Bartholdi had assembled the statue's right arm and torch,
and displayed them in Philadelphia.
It is said that he had used his wife's arm as the model,
but felt her face was too beautiful for the statue.
He needed someone whose face represented suffering yet strength,
someone more severe than beautiful. He chose his mother.
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on an island in Upper New York Bay in 1886.
It had his mother'sface and his wife's body, but Bartholdi called it "my daughter, Liberty".
Barbie Before all the different types of Barbie dolls for sale now, there was just a single Barbie.
Actually, her name was Barbara.
Barbara Handler was the daughter of Elliot and Ruth Handler, co-founders of the Mattel Toy Company.
Ruth came up with the idea for Barbie after watching her daughter play with paper dolls.
The three-dimensional model for Barbie was a German doll-a joke gift for adults described
as having the appearance of "a woman who sold sex".
Mattel refashioned the doll into a decent, all-American-although
with an exaggerated breast size version and named it after Barbara, who was then a teenager.
Since her introduction in 1959, Barbie has become the universally recognized Queen of the Dolls.
Mattel says the average American girl owns ten Barbie dolls,
and two are sold somewhere in the worldevery second.
Now more than sixty years old, Barbara-who declines interviews but is said to have loved the doll
may be the most famous unknown figure on the planet.
Barbie's boyfriend, Ken, was introduced in 1961 and named after Barbara's brother.
The real Ken, who died in 1994, was disgusted by the doll that made his family famous.
"I don't want my children toplay with it," he said in 1993.
American GothicGrant Wood instantly rose to fame in 1930 with his painting American Gothic,
an often-copiedinterpretation of the solemn pride of American farmers.
The painting shows a serious-looking man anda woman standing in front of a farmhouse.
He was strongly influenced by medieval artists and inspired by the Gothic
window of an old farmhouse,
but the faces in his composition were what captured the world's attention.
Wood liked to paint faces he knew well.
For the grave farmer he used his dentist, a sour-looking man.
For the woman standing alongside him, the artist chose his sister, Nan.
He stretched the models' necksa bit, but there was no doubt who posed for the portrait.
Nan later remarked that the fame she gained from American Gothic saved
her from a very boring life. The Buffalo Nickel
Today, American coins honor prominent figures of the
US government-mostly famous former presidents.
But the Buffalo nickel, produced from 1913 to 1938, honored a pair of
connected tragediesfrom the settlement of the American frontier
the destruction of the buffalo herds and the AmericanIndians.
While white people had previously been used as models for most American coins,
famed artist JamesEarle Fraser went against tradition by using
three actual American Indians as models for his creation.
For the buffalo on the other side, since buffalo no longer wandered about the great grasslands,
Fraser was forced to sketch an aging buffalo from New York City's Central Park Zoo.
Two years later, in 1915,this animal was sold for $100 and killed for meat, a hide,
and a wall decoration made from its horns.
Uncle Sam Fourteen-year-old Sam Wilson ran away from home to join his father and
older brothers in the fightto liberate the American colonies from the British
during the American Revolution. At age 23,
hestarted a meatpacking business and earned a reputation for being honest and hard working.
During a later war in 1812, Wilson gained a position inspecting meat for US Army forces,
working with a man who had signed a contract with the government to provide meat to the army.
Barrels of meat supplied to the army were stamped "EA-US",
identifying the company (EA) and country of origin(US).
According to one story, when a government official visited the plant and asked about the letters,
acreative employee told him "US" was short for "Uncle Sam" Wilson.
Soon soldiers were saying all Armysupplies were from "Uncle Sam".
After the war, a character called Uncle Sam began appearing in political cartoons,
his form evolving from an earlier cartoon character called Brother
Jonathan that was popular during the AmericanRevolution.
Uncle Sam soon replaced Brother Jonathan as American's most popular symbol.
The most enduring portrait of Uncle Sam was
created by artist James Montgomery Flagg
in his famous army recruiting posters of World Wars I and II.
That version-a tall man with white hair and a small whitebeard on his chin,
a dark blue coat and a tall hat with stars on it-was a self-portrait of Flagg.