# When was the first ticker-tape parade? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 10, 2006, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942 "2006-10-10T16:03:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/1 "2006-10-10T16:03:30Z")
And what do they use now that ticker-tape is dead and gone? ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/2 "2006-10-10T16:21:17Z")
Charles Lindbergh, 1927. Shredded paper, except that most office windows no longer open. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/3 "2006-10-10T16:27:39Z")
[This site](http://www.americanparknetwork.com/parkinfo/content.asp?catid=85&contenttypeid=35) attributes it to the unveiling of the statue of liberty in 1886, with a quote from the New York times: > [@](#): > > Unveiling day, October 28, 1886, was a public holiday. The rainy, foggy day could not dampen the spirits of the more than 1 million people who lined New York’s streets, draped with red, white and blue and French tricolor bunting, to watch a parade of more than 20,000 pass by. Wall Street was the only area of the city working on the day of Liberty’s unveiling. The New York Times reported that as the parade passed by, the office boys “from a hundred windows began to unreel the spools of tape that record the fateful messages of the ‘ticker.’ In a moment the air was white with curling streamers.” And so the famous New York ticker-tape parade was born. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/4 "2006-10-10T16:29:39Z")
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker-tape_parade) lists the first ticker-tape parade as happening in New York city, celebrating the Statue of Liberty, on October 29, 1886. Now, most buildings don’t have openable windows, so people can’t throw paper out any more. In San Francisco, the New Year’s Eve tradiion had been to throw out the desk calendar pages. That’s largely stopped as well, both due to a lack of suitable windows and because when the public works people found identifiable paper (memos “From the desk of…” and similar) they’d send it to that person along with a warning not to litter. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/5 "2006-10-10T16:32:13Z")
Wiki also has a [list of New York’s parades](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ticker-tape_parades_in_New_York_City) - there’s been only one so far since 2000, and that was to celebrate the Yankees winning the World Series. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/6 "2006-10-10T16:41:21Z")
[QUOTE=gotpasswords] Wiki also has a [list of New York’s parades](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ticker-tape_parades_in_New_York_City) - there’s been only one so far since 2000, and that was to celebrate the Yankees winning the World Series. [/QUOTE] I was in that parade. There was no shortage of open windows to dump the shredded office paper out of. The mess was amazing and beautiful all at once. The Parade formed up at Battery Park with Marching Bands from all over the Tri-State area. I was an adult chaperone with the Long Branch, NJ Band. The buildings along the route are older and retained plenty of windows that opened. There was also paper coming down from some of the rooftops. Jim ---
**Author:** ![stuyguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@stuyguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stuyguy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/7 "2006-10-10T17:07:50Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] I was in that parade. There was no shortage of open windows to dump the shredded office paper out of. The mess was amazing and beautiful all at once. The Parade formed up at Battery Park with Marching Bands from all over the Tri-State area. I was an adult chaperone with the Long Branch, NJ Band. The buildings along the route are older and retained plenty of windows that opened. There was also paper coming down from some of the rooftops. Jim [/QUOTE] I’ll second Jim’s claim that NYC’s “Canyon of Heros” can host a tickertape parade with an impressive paper blizzard even in this age of sealed windows. I personally was at the Gulf War homecoming parade and a Yankee parade, and I was ankledeep in shredded memos, toilet paper, phone book pages, etc., etc. There are still plenty of old style buildings from the Battery to City Hall to get the job done. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-was-the-first-ticker-tape-parade/375942/8 "2006-10-10T17:27:12Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] The buildings along the route are older and retained plenty of windows that opened. There was also paper coming down from some of the rooftops. Jim [/QUOTE] Heck, even the older parts of downtown L.A. have lots of buildings with windows that open, though some of those are being converted into lofts. We went to look some of them, one day, and I was amazed that the windows opened completely and allowed full access to the…er…ground, very rapidly, and that the wall part below the windows barely came up past my knees, or about two feet.