The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island (formerly Bedloe's Island) in New York Harbor. The statue is a figure of Libertas, a robed Roman liberty goddess. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

Although her full name is "Liberty Enlightening the World", the Statue of Liberty has acquired many nicknames over the years, including Aunt Liberty, Green Goddess, Lady of the Harbor, Lady Liberty and Mother of Freedom.

From the ground to the top of the torch, the statue measures 305 feet (93 meters) and weighs 204 metric tons.

France gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1886 for its centennial celebration. In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue's big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P. Morton.

When the statue was originally assembled, it was a dull brown color, reflecting the natural color of its copper plates. Over time, however, the weathering of the copper created a thin layer of copper carbonate called a patina. It took about 30 years for this phenomenon to give the Statue of Liberty its trademark green color.

The statue was shipped as 350 pieces in 214 crates and took 4 months to assemble at its current home.

She wears a crown with seven spikes. Some say the seven spikes represent the seven seas and seven continents of the world, others say they represent the rays of the sun and show that Lady Liberty is divine.

That's right, the world's most recognized symbol of freedom and the American dream was originally intended for Egypt, which ultimately rejected it for being too expensive. The decision came as a disappointment to Lady Liberty's creator, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who had envisioned the Suez Canal as the ideal venue for his mammoth harbor structure.

According to popular accounts, the face was modeled after that of Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi, the sculptor's mother.

The copper outer layer of the statue is only 3/32 of an inch thick. Still, that's enough copper to make 30 million pennies!