Where is the Statue of Liberty?

This might seem like a simple question.  New York of course, but there is not just one.  Most people know that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France in 1886.  Lady Liberty arrived as an unassembled puzzle on June 17, 1885 in New York harbor.  However, it was not the first to be created.  Liberty Enlightening the World is the name given to the statue by its sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi who created numerous small copies to help fund the project.  The one in the picture below is in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.  What is also interesting is Bartholdi designed a statue of the Marquis de Lafayette that is in Union Square, Manhattan.

One of my favorite episodes in History Channel's America Story of Us is about the building of the Statue of Liberty.

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National D-Day Memorial in Rural Virginia

June 6, 1944 is a date that rivals July 4, 1776, July 3, 1863, Dec. 7, 1941 as one of the greatest turning points in American history. The Allied landings on the Normandy Beaches ingrained the term D-Day in the consciousness of almost all Americans, British, French, and Canadians. As I prepare to take 26 high school students across the Atlantic to experience World War II. We are fortunate to live only 2 hours from the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA. On an overcast, rainy Sunday afternoon in May we took some of our students to the Memorial to get a holistic picture of D-Day from those who planned it all the way to the marines who scaled Point-du-hoc.  Bedford lost more men proportionally than any other community in the country.  I highly recommend the book Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw and a trip to the National D-Day Memorial.