For six years, a gilded equestrian statue of King George III had stood in Bowling Green at the southern tip of Manhattan. By the evening of July 9, 1776, it was scrap.
According to the National Park Service, the Declaration of Independence had been read that afternoon to George Washington's troops near the site of today's City Hall. Soldiers, sailors, and members of the Sons of Liberty then marched south down Broadway and pulled the king's statue from its pedestal.
The statue weighed about two tons. According to the Journal of the American Revolution, most of the lead was hauled by oxcart to Litchfield, Connecticut, where General Oliver Wolcott's family and neighbors melted it down and recast it as musket balls, 42,088 of them, by Wolcott's own count.
Some pieces went missing along the way. The horse's tail is now on display at the New-York Historical Society.