If you’re visiting New York, make sure to check out the giant copper replica of Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s mother. Yup, you read right. But the Statue of Liberty wasn’t always set to reside in the Big Apple. The original statue was to be called "Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia", and it was to sit at the entrance of the Suez Canal. But the project got turned down due to the costs involved, and so the idea was recycled into “The Statue of Liberty.”

Turning Bartholdi’s idea into reality took 21 years, and cost the French $250,000. But to the French, it was worth it: the Statue of Liberty would serve as a public symbol of friendship and showed the world that their country was recovering from the Franco-Prussian war.