A History Of New York City Ticker-Tape Parades
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) - The metal barricades are up and the paper is good to go as New York City gets ready to celebrate the World Cup champion U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team with a ticker-tape parade.
RELATED: Street Closures For 2019 Women's World Cup Ticker-Tape Parade
The city has thrown 206 ticker-tape parades -- honoring presidents, heroes of war, astronauts and athletes -- since 1886, when an impromptu celebration broke out for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.
Honorees paraded through the streets as onlookers threw ticker-tape from windows to create a blizzard-like effect through the Canyon of Heroes, which stretches from Battery Park to City Hall.
Ticker tape, thin strips of paper transmitting stock market information, is no longer used and has since been replaced with shredded recycled paper.
Before the paper is thrown from rooftops and windows along the parade route, it's shredded, baled and packaged at Kansas Recycling in Red Hook.
The company feeds 1,500-pound rolls of damaged printing paper into industrial shredders and then ship it into the city where the Downtown Alliance distributes the shredded paper to buildings up and down the Canyon of Heroes.
"All this stuff is recycled paper, so it gets recycled again, and again and again," said the company’s general manager John Cioffi.
The company donated one ton of paper for the big celebration so offices don't have to provide their own paper to rain onto the parade route.
The last ticker-tape parade in 2015 when the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team won the World Cup.
Here's a quick look at some of the many ticker-tape parades from years past:
April 29, 1889: Centennial of George Washington's inauguration as first president of the United States.
August 6, 1924: U.S. Olympic athletes, on their return from the Paris Games
June 23, 1926: Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett for the first flight over the North Pole.
August 27, 1926: Gertrude Ederle, first woman to swim the English Channel
June 20, 1932: Amelia Earhart for the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman
July 26, 1933: Wiley Post for the first solo flight around the World (seven days, 18 hours and 49 minutes)
August 13, 1969: Neil A. Armstrong, Col. Buzz Aldrin, and Lt. Col. Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Astronauts, for the first manned moon landing
October 20, 1969: New York Mets, World Series champions
October 19, 1977: New York Yankees, World Series champions
June 17 1994: New York Rangers Stanley Cup champions
February 5, 2008: New York Giants, Super Bowl XLII champions
