On This Day in American History — Oct 28: The Statue of Liberty Is Dedicated, the Battle of White Plains

Host 1: Good morning welcome to on this day in American history today is Wednesday October 28th 2026 uh imagine trying to thread a 630 foot steel needle using only hydraulic jacks and fire hoses

Host 2: right or desperately defending a muddy hill from cannon fire fire using walls made literally entirely out of corn stalks

Host 1: exactly in this deep dive we are looking at the historical sources for October 28th to see what happens when the messy physical reality of survival kind of of collides with the giant monuments we build

Host 2: Yeah, it is a a day defined by incredible friction friction spanning three centuries I I mean you have people fighting for the very concept of liberty and then subsequent generations fighting over who actually gets gets to experience it

Host 1: Right so let's start with that raw fight for survival Today marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of White Plains in 1776.

Host 2: George Washington's Continental Army Army retreating from New York City they made a stand at Chatterton's Hill.

Host 1: And the details details in these sources are just well they're incredibly grim.

Host 2: Oh absolutely. absolutely. They were facing about 4,000 4,000 British troops and those hired German mercenaries you know the Hessians. Hessians

Host 3: the Hessians yeah

Host 2: Right and the Americans were digging in behind breastworks which are basically improvised defensive walls, but surviving soldiers later admitted they were made largely out of corn stalks.

Host 3: Wait corn stalks?

Host 2: Right

Host 3: Against British artillery

Host 2: Yeah exactly when a dozen British cannons cannons open fire Colonel John Hazlitt actually described the barrage as a continual peel of reiterated thunder

Host 3: Wow and you know the casualty counts in the historical record are still heavily disputed today ranging anywhere from 150 to 500 Americans

Host 2: Right it was a pretty chaotic retreat

Host 3: But for a quick Halloween connection, the sources note that one of those Hessian casualties may may have actually inspired Washington Irving's Irving's Headless Horseman.

Host 2: Which is a pretty wild piece of trivia.

Host 1: It really is. But, you know, beyond the trivia, losing the hill didn't mean losing the war. Washington essentially pulled a rope-a-dope strategy.

Host 2: Right.

Host 1: He managed to retreat to North Castle Heights, keeping the army completely intact.

Host 2: Which really was the entire strategic goal at that point. I mean, they couldn't go toe to toe with the British military machine. So they just fought a war of attrition.

Host 1: Surviving just long enough to eventually turn the tide of Trenton.

Host 2: Exactly. They were fighting for the fundamental idea of independence.

Host 1: But exactly 110 years later, we see just how complicated defining that independence became. October 28th, 1886 brings us the dedication of Liberty Enlightening the World.

Host 2: Better known as the Statue of Liberty.

Host 1: Right.

Host 2: Built by immigrants and celebrated with New York City's first ever ticker tape parade.

Host 1: Though the weather was terrible, right?

Host 2: Oh yeah, the fog completely ruined the visibility for the water parade and the sculptor Bartholdi actually dropped the French tricolor flag from the statue's face prematurely.

Host 1: Oh no.

Host 2: Yeah, it set off cannons and all these cheers way before the actual cue.

Host 1: I do have the challenge the celebratory narrative of that day though. based on the sources.

Host 2: Oh, for sure. There is a glaring contradiction there.

Host 1: Right, because the New York State Women's Suffrage Suffrage Association couldn't even get tickets to to the island because they were unaccompanied women. They had to charter a boat just to watch through the fog.

Host 2: And the black owned Cleveland Gazette went even further. They published an editorial arguing the torch shouldn't be lit at all until the United States became a truly free country.

Host 1: Pointing out the hypocrisy of a beacon of freedom in a nation still denying basic equality to its black citizens.

Host 2: It perfectly illustrates how monuments often project this finalized perfect ideal to the outside world. world.

Host 1: while completely masking masking intense internal divisions.

Host 2: Which actually brings us to another massive physical symbol of an an abstract idea westward expansion.

Host 1: Yes October 28th 1965

Host 2: The topping out of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis

Host 1: Designed by Eero Saarinen it is a 630 foot inverted catenary catenary curve But stop there for a second. Uh explain the physics of that why why use an inverted catenary curve

Host 2: well a catenary curve curve is the exact shape a chain makes when you hold it loosely by both ends

Host 1: okay

Host 2: when you flip that shape upside down to build an arch it becomes this engineering superpower it perfectly directs all the structural weight down into the ground

Host 1: meaning it doesn't need any internal support columns

Host 2: exactly

Host 1: but getting the final 10 ton steel section into place at the top was an absolute nightmare

Host 2: oh yeah incredibly stressful

Host 1: technically it wasn't a true keystone because the legs met at a weld line but they had just a three eighths of an inch margin of error and the sun was actively working against them

Host 2: right because of thermal expansion you know when steel gets hot the metal physically grows

Host 1: so the sun hitting the south leg of the arch caused the steel to expand enough that the tiny gap they needed for the final piece was just disappearing

Host 2: so the iron iron workers ran fire hoses all the way up the leg spraying it with cold water to shrink the metal back down

Host 1: which is brilliant only then could they use hydraulic jacks to force the legs apart just enough to fit the piece

Host 2: and KSDK News reported that Vice President Hubert Humphrey hovered in a helicopter watching the whole thing

Host 1: while a time capsule was welded inside

Host 1: It is

Host 2: it is just a flawless piece of 1960s engineering built to memorialize the 1800s frontier

Host 1: before we wrap up a couple of quick hits from the from the sources for today's date in 1919 Congress overrode a presidential veto to pass the Volstead Act initiating prohibition

Host 2: and in 1962 Radio Moscow announced the removal of missiles from Cuba de-escalating the Cuban Missile Missile Crisis

Host 1: next time you look at a famous monument or study a historic battle ask yourself who who was left off the invitation list and whose ghost might still be haunting haunting the story thanks for tuning in see see you back here tomorrow