CANYON OF HEROS
-------------
John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
www.nyskies.org
nyskies@nyskies.org
2008 March 1 initial
2009 January 24 current
Introduction
----------
Readers asked about tickertape parades after the one on 2008
February 5 for NY Giants Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots
Surprisingly, there is no definitive list of these parades! This fact
came out when Lower Manhattan planned its parade plaques for Broadway
in the mid 2000s.
You would think tickertape parades, such important events in the
City, are thoroly chronicled and documented. Pick up a list at the
mayor's office, right? They aren't! When Lower Manhattan built its
plaques in about 2004, it missed, for lack of good records, several
parades that took place in the 1970s! They were caught by plaque
workers who remembered these parades.
I assembled this table from many source, including searches of
early New York newspapers. Altho I cleaned up the list, it may still
be incomplete. Please, if you suspect a missing parade, tell me, with
positive source for it. This can be a newspaper report or announcement
for the parade or a souvenir from it. Merely citing other compilations
isn't all that reliable, altho you may want to follow up for any you
uncover them them.
Brief history
-----------
There were parades up Broadway in New York since the Dutch era,
like for any other large town in the 1600s. The tradition continued
into the British colonial times, culminating with the parade and
celebration for Evacuation Day.
Parades were staged in Broadway because of the streets in old New
York it ws the broadest, straightest, longest street. It traversing
the entire latitude of the City from the Battery to the Commons
(present City Hall Park).
Even in the 1800s there were 'tall' buildings massed along
Broadway of up to 8 or 10 floors. These provided an overlook upon the
parades. These were the headquarters of commercial and business
companies dealing with trade and finance. Wall Street was already a
major financial hub, ranking only under London.
In the 1880s skyscraper building began in New York with towers
reaching 15, 20, 25 floors along Broadway. Much of the boom was the
perfection of the elevator, making it safe and easy to get to the
upper floors. An other was the desire to spot ships farther out in the
harbor by telescope from an upper floor.
As far as anyone can determine, no one before the 1886 Statue of
Liberty parade thought to toss loose material onto the marchers.
Descriptions allude to flag and sign waving and to fireworks but never
to falling debris, like chopped up papers, ripped up cotton, shreds of
cloth, wood chips...
TIckertape
--------
The rise of New York as the planetary monetary capital demanded
rapid accurate news from the finance markets in Wall Street. The
original method was to have runners write down the news items and ,
well, run to their clients in the surrounding streets. They were the
early-day bicycle messengers. Bicycles in the 19th century were too
crude and the streets too rugged for travel by bike. The messengers
got about on foot.
Telegraphy was tried but its messages were mixed in with all other
telegraph traffic. A dedicated service was needed. Thomas Edison
invented the tickertape machine, a specialized telegraph that also
generated a hardcopy of the market news. It sent out its news within
seconds with unerring precision to all of its subscribers.
The machine, about the size of a cukoo clock, sat on the table or
stand under a glass cover. As merket news was received, it was punched
into a paper tape, that indexed forward by a battery-powered motor.
When commercial electric was offered, the machines were built to run
off of it.
The punches were made by a row of styli driven by solenoids to
make a series of coded holes across the width of the tape. The name
'ticker' comes from the gentle punch noise, a 'tick', when the styli
pierced the paper tape. The holes represented the market instrument
and trading price. Customers knew the coding of the holes and read the
tape as it issued from the machine.
The symbol for a compnay trading in the New York Stock Exchange is
its 'ticker symbol', once the identifying abbreviation punched in the
tape by the ticker machine. This same symbol is used today (provided
the company is still around!) in clear text. Symbols for new companies
are assigned using the same ticker coding scheme.
The machine generated piles of punched tape. After the customer
read off its news, the tape went into the office trash. There was
always a sack or two laying around the office for the waste tape. This
material made the New York parade the definitive 'tickertape parade'.
The tossed tape spirals out into the air, the holes causing it to
loft and swell as it twists around..The use of tickertape waned in the
mid 20th century with the advent of computerized news services.Yet,
tickertape itself was in use, as the hardcopy output of computer-
controlled printers, until the 1970s.
The supply of tickertape rapidly shrank for use in parades. For a
couple decades the City had a deal to artificially make punched
tickertape. The holes were randomly inserted or coded from old news.
This it distributed in bags of about 20 kilograms each to buildings
along the parade route!
Today, with the baility of businesses to generate particulate
paper matter thru shredders or chippers, no more tickertape is needed.
the City does hand out bags of confetti, for which there are several
current manufacturers.
First parades
-----------
The 1886 celebration was a spontaneous tickertape parade. The
ticker machine was in wide use along Broadway. With a supply of old
tickertape to hand, some one, now lost to history, decided to tear
some old tape and toss it out of his offive window. The tape unfurled,
curled and snaked as it drifted to the ground.
Within seconds, the entire street was a blizzard of tickertape,
and likely other small light materials. However, the name 'tickertape
parade' seems to be first used for the parades of the 1910s to honor
World War I heros.
The tickertape parade was formalized in the late 1910s under the
City's official 'greeter', the office that hosted dignitaries and
delegates when they visited the City. It arranged where appropriate a
parade in their honor. It organized the police, sanitation, traffic,
other departments to stage the parades.
When the greeter's office was closed in the 1950s, the mayor's
office continued management of the parades. By then the ticker was
under displacement by teletype and computers. used Z-fold tearoffs,
computer punchcards, perforation punchouts, torn up phone books,
streams of toilet tissue, ripped up correspondence, time cards,
routing slips were added to the mix of parade snow.
Heros or heroes?
--------------
Because of the parades and the tall towers, Broadway is called the
'Canyon of heroes'. Or is it the 'Canyon of heros'? 'Hero' is a noun
ending in 'o' for which the plural adds 'es' like 'potatoes',
'nachoes', 'bozoes'.
In recent decades, particularly since the 1990s, there is a swing
in American language to regularize words. One shift is to add 's', not
'es', to nounds ending in 'o' to make plurals: 'potatos', 'nachos',
'bozos'. You may see either 'heroes' or 'heros' in Broadway's
nickname. Both are correct.
History in the sidewalk
---------------------
In about 2004 Lower Manhattan began a project to commemorate the
tickertape parades by embedding in the sideewalk of Broadway plaques
for each event. The plaques are in time order starting from Bowling
Green and ending, as at January 2009, in front of the Woolworth
building.
The plaques are a living history book to inspire new generations.
Standing on a marker will induce study of its event and people, link
them to other phases of history, compare them to modern times.
As you walk from the one to the next, you experience human
history. You FEEL in your bones that king, aviator, general, athlete,
explorer, astronaut walking past you, waving to you. You WANT to cheer
him right then and there, while standing on his plaque, decades after
he walked by!
The plaques are strips of granite with steel lettering embedded in
the sidewalk along Broadway. They are flush with the ground, so you
can't get a good rubbing off of them. Because they are laid on both
sides of Broadway, you have to zigzag your way along the street. They
are placed a bit irregularly about 5 meters apart and are skipped
momentarily for street works. As previously missed parades are
confirmed, plaques for them will be inserted among the others already
in place.
You may photograph them. The plaques align right-way-round as seen
from the south (downtown, toward Bowling Green). Try to get daylight
onto the plaque to better show up the lettering. Photography at night
or under deep shade gets only lousy pictures.
There was a booklet listing all of the plaques that seems to br
out of print with no promise of reissue. The list here has more
parades than are placed among the plaques. This is specially true in
the years before World War I.
The newest plaque honors the New Tork Giants for its Super Boel
vistory over the New England patriots in 2008. The paenultimate one
commemorates the World Series win by the New York Yankees in 2000.
There is room for 25-30 more plaques in Broadway and around City
Hall Park.
The last parade?
--------------
A tickertape parade's majestic feature is the downflux of snow
over the marchers from the towers lining the route. Thus, falling
debris was a symbol of a cheerful, happy, good occasion.
Then, on 11 September 2001, there fell over Broadway a snow of an
utterly other meaning. The collapse of the World Trade Center rained
papers and other material all over Lower Manhattan. Some items were
not so innocent, like desks, concrete chunks, pipes, office machines.
This downflux was a signature feature of a horrible disaster!
Would this sudden inversion of meaning kill off future tickertape
parades? Would the parade snow spark unintended memories?
There just happened to be no parade for several years after World
Trade Center. By the time the Giants took the Super Bowl, the City
worked off the more intense feelings of World Trade Center. Maybe it
was time to resume the tickertape parades?
There was serious debate. Maybe with the new millennium,
tickertape parades are outdated? Maybe there's a new kind of
celebration the City should try? In the end, a tickertape parade in
the traditional manner was held for the Giants.
The marchers and spectators loved it! The interval since the Mets-
Yankees parade was many years, not really more than lulls between
parades in previous decades. So, New York got its parades, with new
ones in the works for future occasions.
Marchers
------
The parade starts at Bowling Green, at the foot of Broadway just
north of Battery Park, quite where the colonial parades stepped off
from. Lower Manhattan enlarged over the centuries from landfill.
Bowling Green was closer to the waterfront back then. The colonial
shore was about in the middle of today's Battery Park, where the
colonial British fort stood.
Marchers muster in along streets around Bowling Green and Battery
Park. The delegations and vehicles are dispatched into the parade in
the prescribed order to head north into Broadway. Marchers arrive
early, according to their preparations, but all must be ready to step
off when cued.
Unlike the Thanksgiving parade, there are no lavish floats or
costumes. The marchers walk on foot or ride in open-top cars. Large
delegations may sit on seats fitted into trucks. Dress is either
business attire or the outfit worn during the heroic event, like a
military or sports uniform. Music bands, horse-mounted police and
rangers, and banners are the most elaborate features of a tickertape
parade.
The marchers walk or ride north in Broadway to City Hall Park for
speeches and ceremonies on the steps of City Hall. In colonial times
the parade ended in the Commons, which evolved into City Hall Park,
then at the north frontier of the City. With no City Hall on Broadway
in colonial times, the speeches were done at Trinity Church with a
rally to end the march in the Commons.
One trick is to clamp your shirt collar against your neck and
throat. Use large rubber bands or masking tape for easy painless
removal after the parade. This lessens the amount of snow that gets
down your back and chest. The band or tape can be disguised by a scarf
or other clothing. No kidding, this really works!
An other trick is to have to hand a whisk broom to brush snow off
of you from time to time. Take turns with the other honorees with you.
After reaching City Hall Park, the honorees walk to City Hall to
assigned seats. The rest of the parade musters out. These other
marchers may watch the ceremony or just go home. In addition to the
marchers, special guests may already be seated at City Hall, not
marching in the parade, to take in the ceremony.
One of the rituals at City Hall is to present to the honoree the
'key to the City'. This is a synbolic metal key, about the size of a
hefty executive pen, in a presentation box.
It signifies that the honoree is so welcome in the City that he
can come and go as he wants thru the City's gate with his own key.
There never was such a gate for New York. The tradition comes from the
Dutch era, when in Holland and elsewhere in Europe towns were
circumvallated with a defense wall. Entry was by advance and
recognition before gatekeepers. Designated honored persons were given
their own key to unlock the gate and enter.
Curbside spectators
-----------------
Parades are announced days or a week ahead, for preparations among
municipal, state, federal agencies and private companies. The public
has tow main choices to watch the parade. The most popular by sheer
numbers is to stand at curbside along Broadway Parade barriers are
deployed to keep the crowds on the sidewalk. It is not really allowed
to jump the barriers to mingle with the marchers. Sometimes when the
parade is paused marchers may come to the curb to shake hands with the
spectators.
Parades are held at all times of the year, from arctic winter thru
tropical summer. Dress for the weather. Parades are rarely, if ever,
postponed or cancelled once established. Be prepared to stand in the
outdoors for a couple hours. This includes waiting at your spot for
the parade to reach you..
Parades are always in daylight, typicly stepping off at 10:30-
11:00 and reaching City Hall at 12:00. Counting in the whole length of
the line of marchers, the parade takes about a half hour to pass
vompletely by you.
This practice comes fro celestial geometry and long history.
Broadway aligns about 29-1/2 degrees right, west, of due south, so it
is in shade during the morning. This makes it more comfortable for the
marchers and spectators. The worst discomfort comes from lingering
chill and damp before the Sun heats the street in early afternoon. It
may be more comfortable in summer when the shade blocks the solar
heating until the parade is over.
Spectators for tickertape parades are extremely well-behaved folk.
This is amazing given the diversity of population in the City and the
variety of theme of the parade. The one roof rule is that you must not
deliberately block the view of others around you. There being no tiers
or steps for the spectators, it's easy to forget that people behind
you must look around your shoulders and head.
Large hats and hoods are out, as are large flags and signs. It is
almost a given that you let children and short adults to stand in
front of you. You probably do not want to sit on the bare curb to get
under spectators behind you. Place a newspaper, shopping bag, other
protective sheet under you. DIscard this when you leave.
You can use noise makers a-la New Year's. You can toss harmless
snow into the parade, but it will have no effect on the overall
spectacle. It is also an other prop you have to mind, possibly
distracting you from the show.
It can be clumsy to eat or drink during the parade with other
people jostline and cheering around you. Do mind your drinks to avoid
spills and splashes. The parade lasts only an hour or so as it passes
by a given spot, so you'll be able to break away for lunch or relief.
Pick up any litter you make and place it in the trash baskets
along Broadway. These may be completely full by the end of the parade,
but do try to oblige. Don't throw it into the street thinking the
sanitation team will clean it. It will, but you'll really, like
really, look barbaric.
You may photograph the parade with any harmless means. Under rain
or deep cloud you may use flash or video lamps. You should take some
pictures with the flash/lamp turned off. You'll be surprised that your
camera may adjust its exposure enough to get pleasing pictures with
just the ambient lighting.
One happy feature is that spectators usually don't mass up until
shortly before the parade. You don't, like for the Thanksgiving or New
Year's festivities, camp out at your viewing spot. Showing up an hour
before the parade steps off should be adequate.
There are no 'best' places along Broadway, all points being about
equally good for curbside viewing. Around City Hall there is very
limited space for public spectators. The Park in front of City Hall is
full of trees that block your view. For certain parades, the park may
be closed, leaving essentially no space for the public.
Some view is obtained at the sides of City Hall in Broadway and
Park Row, but only from tens of meters distance. In substance, once
the parade disbands at City Hall Park the show is over for the causal
spectator.
Overlook spectators
-----------------
The other way to watch is from a window overlooking Broadway. This
requires that you have a room up there or are a guest of some one who
does have one. There is no public access to wayside windows without
explicit permission from within the building. If you are favored to
watch from a friend's window, MAKE SURE he gives you written
authorization to enter his building.
You can cheer and scream and yell but no one on the street will
hear you. There's enough noise from the street to totally drown you
out. Ho ahead with New Year's noise makers, horns, whistles.
Be specially careful if your window opens from the bottom such
that you can fall out! I have no knowledge of any one falling from a
window during a tickertape parade, but there are each year about 100
deaths from such falls. It is, believe it or not, one of the leading
causes of death on Manhattan! Stay INSIDE the window. You may look out
by crouching down so only your head pokes out. This keeps the bulk of
your body inside to prevent loss of balance. NEVER go out onto the
jump on the outside of the building.
In the 1960s and 1970s most new buildings along Broadway were
constructed with sealed windows. This prevented the tossing of
confetti and tickertape. The fear was that within a decade, there
would be no more tickertape parades because, as buildings are replaced
or renovated, the would be fewer and fewer apertile windows.
Starting in the 1980s, partly from the nascent green movement,
some renovations replaced the sealed windows with apertile ones (with
limited swing or lift), once again letting the snow fall from them.
Parade concerns
-------------
In the 1990s and continuing thru today a new fear, identity theft
or corporate espionage, sprang up. It was feasible for badniks on the
street to collect business and private papers from the falling snow
and convert them to their own nefarious use.
The remedy, thanks to electric shredders, is to reduce the papers
to tiny bits. They will disperse in the air as they fall, thoroly
randomizing them against any hope of assembly by the baddies.
In the 2000s the threat of bomb attacks entered the scene. With
the brutal experience of World trade Center, it is possible that a
suicidal person, hemmed in by dense crowds, could explode a bomb. Any
large public gathering, like for the annual New Year's festival in
Times Square, carries this concern.Since we had only one tickertape
parade since World Trade Center, it's hard to say if the new security
provisions are adequate.
The iron rule exists that nothing must be thrown out that can harm
any one on the street by impact. Only loose tiny materials may be in
the snow. The parades are carefully videotaped over their whole route
so any violators are quickly found and penalized. Once in a while a
box or tray does fall. So far these seem to be honest mistakes, being
knocked off of a window sill by accident..
Heros of humankind
----------------
As you study the table below, you'll notice how the concept of
hero shifted over the decades. The City honored science, exploration,
battles, rescues. It also staged many vanity parades, just to say,
'welcome!' to visiting dignitaries without specific achievements. It
also honored sports champions.
The selection of honorees reflects the features of society, decade
by decade, deemed worthy of recognition. Except for vanity parades,
for assorted kings, emperors, presidents, other leaders because of
their rank, the New York tickertape parades do give a fair cross
section of human achievements.
One honoree is rather unusual. William O'Dwyer was mayor of New
York in the late 1940s. He was caught in a corruption scandal in his
office and was forced to resign. He jumped to a new career as
ambassador to Mexico, where he spent most of his remianing life. Not
much of a hero, no?
A tickertape parade was staged for him on August 31st of 1950, his
last day in office! Historians debate the true purpose of this parade.
was it a 'Good riddance, go away!' celebration? Was it a 'Nyah,
suckers, I'm off to Mexico!' celebration? Which ever, there's the
plaque for him in front of ! Wall Street, directly across from Trinity
Church.
Table of parades
--------------
There were so far over 200[!] tickertape parades from 1886 thru
2008. Some early parades were loosely described in the news media and
the term 'tickertape parade' seems to be first coined for the parades
for World War I heros. Absence of specific mention of tickertape in
anews story may mean either that there was none or that it was too
common a knowledge to emphasize.
Parades were staged at irregular intervals. Some years have many
and some decades have only a few.
------------------------------------------------------
1880s
1886 Oct 29 - Statue of Liberty dedication [spontaneous]
1888 May 11 - Recovery from Blizzard of 1888 March 13
1889 Apr 29 - Centennial of Washington presidential inauguration
1890s
1899 Sep 30 - Adml Dewey for Battle of Manila in Spanish-American War
1900s
1909 Date unknown - Jack Binns of RMS Republic for world's 1st radio-
assisted sea rescue
1910s
1910 Jun 18 - Theodore Roosevelt return from his African safari
1919 Sep 8 - Genl Pershing commander American Expeditionary Force
1919 Oct 3 - King Albert & Queen Elisabeth of Belgium
1919 Nov 18 - Edward Albert, Prince of Wales.
1920s
1921 Oct 19 - Genl Armando Diaz, Italian commander
1921 Oct 28 - Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France.
1922 Apr 24 - Joseph Joffre, Marshal of France
1922 Nov 18 - Georges Clemenceau former premier of France.
1923 Oct 5 - David Lloyd George former prime minister of UK.
1924 Aug 6 - US athletes from Paris Olympics
1926 Feb 16 - Capt George Fried and SS Pres Roosevelt for sea rescue.
1926 May 27 - Crown Prince Adolf, Crown Princess Louise, of Sweden
1926 Jun 23 - Cmdr Richard Byrd, Floyd Bennett, flight over N Pole
1926 Jul 2 - Bobby Jones winner of British Open golf tournament
1926 Aug 27 - Gertrude Ederle 1st woman to swim English Channel
1926 Sep 10 - Amelia Corson 1st mother; 2nd woman to swim English Chl
1926 Oct 18 - Queen Marie of Romania.
1927 Jun 13 - Charles Lindbergh for solo transatlantic flight.
1927 Jul 18 - Cmdr Richard Byrd and crew for transatlantic flight.
1927 Nov 11 - Ruth Elder, George Haldeman, for flight NYC-Azores.
1928 Jan 20 - W Cosgrave, Pres of Exec Council of Irish Free State.
1928 Apr 25 - Hermann Kohl Maj James Fitzmaurice, Baron von
Hunefeld for 1st westward transatlantic flight
1928 Aug 22 - US Olympic athletes.
1929 May 4 - Prince Ludovico Spado Potenziani governor of Rome
1929 Jul 6 - Amelia Earhart, Wilmer Stulz, Louis Gordon
1929 Oct 16 - Hugo Eckener and crew of the Graf Zeppelin
1929 Jan 28 - Capt Fried and crew for rescue of freighter Florida
1929 Oct 4 - James Ramsay MacDonald prime minister of United Kingdom
1930s
1930 May 26 - Marquis Jacques de Dampierre rider on the Lafayette
1930 Jun 11 - Julio Prestes de Albuquerque pres-elect of Brazil.
1930 Jun 18 - Rear Adml Richard Byrd for expedition to Antarctica.
1930 Jul 2 - Bobby Jones winner of British Open golf tournament.
1930 Sep 4 - Cpt Coste and Maurice Bellonte for flight Paris-NYC
1931 Jul 2 - Wiley Post and Harold Gatty for round-the-world flight.
1931 Oct 22 - Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France.
1932 Jun 20 - Amelia Earhart Putnam for transatlantic flight.
1933 Jul 21 - Air Marshal Balbo and crew for flight Rome-Chicago
1933 Jul 26 - Wiley Post for eight-day round-the-world flight
1933 Aug 1 - Cpt Mollison and wife for 1st solo westward
transatlantic flight Wales-Connecticut
1936 Sep 3 - Jesse Owens for winning 4 gold medals and US team at
Berlin Olympics
1938 Jul 15 - Howard Hughes for three-day flight around the world
1938 Aug 5 - Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan for NYC-Ireland flight
1939 Apr 27 - Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway
1939 May 1 - Rear Adml Johnson commander of the Atlantic Squadron
1940s
1945 Jun 10 - Genl Eisenhower commander of Allied Forces in WWII
1945 Aug 27 - Genl Charles de Gaulle interim president of France
1945 Sep 14 - Genl Jonathan Wainwright hero of Corregidor
1945 Oct 9 - Fleet Adml Chester Nimitz for WWII services
1945 Oct 27 - President Harry Truman continuing Roosevelt's term
1945 Dec 14 - Fleet Adml William Halsey for WWII services
1946 Jan 12 - US 82nd Airborne Div as All American Div in WWII
1946 Mar 14 - Winston Churchill former prime minister of UK
1947 Jan 13 - Alcide De Gasperi premier of Italy
1947 Feb 7 - Viscount Alexander of Tunis, govr genl of Canada
1947 May 2 - Miguel Aleman Valdes president of Mexico
1947 Nov 18 - US-Europe 'Friendship train' with gifts and supplies
1948 Mar 9 - Eamon de Valera former Taoiseach of Rep of Ireland
1948 Jul 7 - Romulo Gallegos president of Venezuela
1949 Feb 3 - France-US 'French gratitude train' with gifts
1949 May 19 - General Lucius Clay military governor of Germany
1949 May 23 - Eurico Gaspar Dutra president of Brazil
1949 Aug 11 - Elpidio Quirino president of the Philippines
1949 Aug 19 - Connie Mack for 50th anniv as mngr of Phila Athletics
1949 Sep 17 - 48 Europe journalists on 'American discovery' flight
1949 Oct 4 - Amer Legion Drum & Bugle Corps national championship
1949 Oct 17 - Jawaharlal Nehru prime minister of India
1950s
1950 Apr 17 - Gabriel Gonzalez Videla president of Chile
1950 Apr 28 - Adml Thomas Kinkaid
1950 May 8 - Liaquat Ali Khan president of Pakistan.
1950 Aug 4 - Robert Gordon Menzies prime minister of Australia.
1950 Aug 22 - Lt Genl Clarence Huebner
1950 Aug 31 - William O'Dwyer for resigning as mayor of New York
1951 Apr 3 - Vincent Auriol president of France
1951 Apr 20 - Genl Douglas MacArthur for WWII & Korean War services
1951 May 9 - David Ben-Gurion prime minister of Israel
1951 May 24 - US 4th Inftry Div 8th Regimt, 1st troops sent to NATO
1951 Jun 25 - Galo Plaza Lasso president of Ecuador
1951 Sep 17 - Sir Denys Lowson, Lord Mayor of London
1951 Sep 28 - Alcide De Gasperi prime minister of Italy
1951 Oct 29 - United Nations servicemen wounded in Korea
1951 Nov 13 - women of the armed forces
1952 Jan 17 - Henrik Carlsen for rescuing crew of Flying Enterprise
1952 Apr 7 - Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands
1952 Jul 7 - US Olympic team
1952 Jul 18 - Cmdr Manning and crew of SS United States for new
speed record crossing the Atlantic
1952 Dec 18 - Lt Genl Crittenberger retiring commander of US First
Army HQ at Fort Jay, Governors Island
1953 Apr 3 - Metro NY Combat Contingt, 1st troop return from Korea.
1953 Apr 24 - Lt Genl James Van Fleet
1953 May 26 - 150th anniversary of setting cornerstone at City Hall
1953 Jul 21 - Ben Hogan winner of the British Open golf tournament
1953 Oct 1 - Jos, Antonio Rem›n president of Panama
1953 Oct 20 - Genl Mark Clark
1953 Oct 26 - Maj Genl William Dean
1953 Nov 2 - King Paul and Queen Friederike of Greece
1954 Feb 1 - Celal Bayar president of Turkey
1654 Apr 22 - US 4th Infantry Division return from Korea
1954 Apr 26 - Lt Genevieve de Galard-Terraube, Angel of Dien Bien Phu
1954 Jun 1 - Haile Selassie emperor of Ethiopia
1954 Aug 2 - Syngman Rhee president of South Korea
1954 Sep 27 - New York Giants winners of National League pennant
1954 Oct 28 - William Tubman president of Liberia
1955 Jan 31 - Paul EugSne Magloire president of Haiti
1955 Aug 11 - Order of the Knights of Pythias
1955 Nov 4 - Carlos Castillo Armas president of Guatemala
1955 Dec 9 - Luis Batlle Berres president of Uruguay
1956 Mar 12 - Giovanni Gronchi president of Italy
1956 May 15 - Armed Forces Day
1956 May 23 - Sukarno president of Indonesia
1957 May 2 - Navy Lg for 60 commanders of Navy & Marines in WWII
1957 May 13 - Ngo Dinh Diem president of South Vietnam
1957 Jul 2 - Alan Villiers and crew of the Mayflower II
1957 Jul 11 - Althea Gibson winner of Wimbledon women's singles
1957 Oct 21 - Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
1957 Dec 9 - King Mohammed V of Morocco
1958 May 20 - Van Cliburn winner of Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition
1958 Jun 20 - Theodor Heuss president of Fedl Rep of Germany
1958 Jun 23 - Carlos Garcia president of the Philippines
1958 Aug 27 - Rear Adml Rickover, Cmdr Anderson, crew USS Nautilus
1959 Jan 29 - Arturo Frondizi president of Argentina
1959 Feb 10 - Willy Brandt mayor of West Berlin
1959 Mar 13 - Jos, Mara Lemus president of El Salvador
1959 Mar 20 - Sean O'Kelly president of Ireland
1959 May 29 - King Baudouin of Belgium
1959 Sep 11 - Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands
1959 Oct 14 - Adolfo L›pez Mateos president of Mexico
1959 Nov 4 - Ahmed Sekou Tour, president of Guinea
1960s
1960 Mar 9 - Carol Heiss, Olympic figure skating gold medalist
1960 Apr 11 - Alberto Lleras Camargo president of Colombia
1960 Apr 26 - Charles de Gaulle president of France
1960 Jul 5 - King Adulyadej and Queen Kitiyakara of Thailand
1960 Oct 19 - John Kennedy, Democratic presidential nominee
1960 Nov 2 - Pres Eisenhower & VP Nixon, Republican pres nominee
1961 Apr 10 - New York Yankees winners of American League pennant
1961 May 11 - Habib Bourguiba president of Tunisia
1961 Oct 13 - Ibrahim Abboud president of Sudan
1961 Oct 27 - builders and crew of the USS Constellation
1962 Mar 1 - John Glenn, 1st US human to orbit Earth
1962 Apr 5 - Joao Goulart president of Brazil
1962 Apr 9 - New York Yankees winners of the World Series
1962 Apr 16 - Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Empress Farah of Iran
1962 Apr 12 - New York Mets new National League baseball team
1962 May 25 - Felix Houphou%t-Boigny president of Ivory Coast
1962 Jun 5 - Scott Carpenter for the Mercury 7 mission
1962 Jun 8 - Archbishop Makarios head of Cypriot Orthodox Church
1962 Jun 14 - Roberto Chiari president of Panama
1963 Jan 17 - Antonio Segni president of Italy
1963 Apr 1 - King Hassan II of Morocco
1963 May 22 - Gordon Cooper for the Mercury 9 mission
1963 Jun 10 - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan president of India
1963 Sep 10 - King Zahir Shah and Queen Homaira of Afghanistan
1963 Oct 4 - Haile Selassie emperor of Ethiopia
1964 Ju6 16 - Operation Sail ship crews
1964 Oct 8 - Diosdado Macapagal president of the Philippines
1965 Mar 29 - Virgil Grissom, John Young for Gemini 3 mission
1965 May 19 - Chung Hee Park president of South Korea
1969 Jan 10 - F Borman, J Lovell, W Anders for Apollo 8 mission
1969 Aug 13 - N Armstrong, E Aldrin, M Collins for Apollo 11 mission
1969 Oct 20 - New York Mets championship in World Series.
1970s
1976 Jul 6 - American Bicentennial and OpSail crews
1977 Oct 19 - New York Yankees championship in World Series
1978 Oct 19 - New York Yankees championship in World Series
1979 Oct 3 - Pope John Paul II papal visit to New York
1980s
1981 Jan 30 - American hostages released from Iran
1984 Aug 15 - US Summer Olympics medalists
1985 May 7 - Vietnam War veterans
1986 Oct 28 - New York Mets championship in World Series
1990s
1990 Jun 20 - Nelson Mandela of South Africa
1991 Jun 10 - Persian Gulf War veterans
1991 Jun 25 - Korean War veterans
1994 Jun 17 - New York Rangers for Stanley Cup hockey championship
1996 Oct 29 - New York Yankees championship in World Series
1998 Oct 17 - Sammy Sosa, Chicago Cubs baseball home run champion
1998 Oct 29 - New York Yankees winners of World Series
1998 Nov 16 - John Glenn and crew of Shuttle Discovery STS-95
1999 Oct 29 - New York Yankees championship in World Series
2000s
2000 Oct 30 - Yankees-Mets Subway Series and Yankees World Series
2008 Feb 5 - New York Giants championship in Super Bowl XLII
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Multiple honors
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Ten persons were featured in more than one tickertape parade.
Many other people were in several parades with sports teams, notably
the New York Yankees.
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Richard Byrd - - - 3 Alcide De Gasperi - 2
Charles de Gaulle - 2 Amelia Earhart - - 2
Dwight Eisenhower - 2 George Fried - - - 2
John Glenn - - - - 2 Bobby Jones - - - - 2
Wiley Post - - - - 2 Haile Selassie - - 2
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Failed parades
------------
There must have been scores of proposed parades that never were
carried out. The honoree is not available, planned services do not
come thru, fund are low, circumstance are not right. Very few of these
failed parades get public attention because when it is clear that the
parade can not march, it is just not announced.
Other proposed parades were really just ideas tossed out with no
actual planning and preparation. There could be hundreds of these, all
very poorly noted in history. 'Oh, let's have a tickertape parade for
such-&-such famous person, OK?'
There must have been many parades offered and set up that were
TURNED DOWN by the honoree. These would be of such embarrassment to
the City that they were quickly withdrawn from public attention.
Here are two example of failed parades. In 1987 the New York
Giants took the Super Bowl. Mayor Koch played down the team as a 'New
Jersey' team not worthy of a New York tickertape parade. A flurry of
nasty words flew between the team and mayor, moving the Giants to
stage its own parade around their Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey.
Mayor Koch softened and offered a tickertape parade to the Giants
as an other celebration supplementing the Meadowlands parade. The team
turned it down, likely out of spite.
The other example came in 2003 after the initial phase of the Iraq
war. Mayor Bloomberg offered a tickertape parade to a delegation of
the armed forces in that campaign, like the one the City gave to
Persian Gulf soldiers in 1991.
During the planning with the Defense Department and President
Bush, it was felt that a tickertape parade would look like the US was
bragging and boasting about the incursion into Iraq. More subdued
congratulations were preferred, like a presentation of honors at City
Hall. The proposed tickertape parade was dropped. .
It isn't worth the time and energy trying to track down all of the
failed parades. They didn't take place and had no lasting adverse
consequences later.
Other towns
---------
A few other towns try to stage their own tickertape parades, but
the results are comical. The snow is thin and covers only a hundred or
so meters of street.
No other town has the density of towers lining the parade route
for so long a distance, about 1,800 meters, as along Broadway in New
York. There are no focal points like Bowling Green and City Hall, a
unique quirk oc City history and geography.
In many towns, there are no elevated places to drop snow from, the
parade being in a field, midway, park.
There is the persistent rumor than a tickertape parade was planned
in Washington DC. Its purpose varies with the rumor-mill. The parade
would march round and round the Washington Monument, the only good
elevation in the town. Parade crews would toss confetti from the
lookout windows at the top. This parade was never staged, but nothing
definite ever turned up about the extent of the plans.
Washington's most important parade, for president's inauguration,
is a tame one in Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White
House with no thought of tickertape features. Spectators stand on the
curb and cheer while the president and his team wave back.
Some towns gave up attempts to have their own tickertape parades
and are satisfied with conventional marches for their heros.
A similar situation applies to the Thanksgiving parade. Here,
there is no snow but the canyon effect of the parade route is simply
unmatched anywhere else on the planet. There are also no large
balloons. That's why when you think of 'Thanksgiving parade', you
instinctively think of the one in New York.
In fact, it is common to call the parade the 'Macy's parade' after
the New York department store that sponsors it. The parade ends when
the last float, that for Santa Claus, crosses the front gate of the
store. That instant officially begins the Christmas season on Earth.
Conclusion
--------
The planet's tickertape parades will be a fixture of the City into
this 21st century. Parades will be staged from time to time, at
erratic intervals, so you have a chance to see several in your
lifetime. If you review the table above, you see that even in the lean
years, there were enough parades to satisfy your purpose in life.