55 Fun Facts About Bronze

Moving a Soviet war memorial called the Bronze Soldier triggered riots in 2007 in which country?

Estonia's move of the statue set off riots in Tallinn, followed by weeks of cyberattacks on government, bank and newspaper websites.

Which storybook boy's bronze statue in London's Kensington Gardens was commissioned by the author who created him?

Peter Pan: J. M. Barrie had the statue put up in secret overnight in 1912, as a May Day surprise for children visiting the park.

Which creature does Louise Bourgeois's giant sculpture Maman, cast in bronze, depict?

A spider: Bourgeois meant her giant spiders as a tribute to her mother, who worked with woven tapestries.

What does Non-Violence, the bronze sculpture at the United Nations in New York, depict?

A knotted revolver: Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd made it after his friend John Lennon was shot dead in New York in 1980.

What is the transitional period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age called?

The name means "copper-stone", the era when pure copper tools appeared before tin alloys.

A foil proposed as the oldest known tin bronze came from Pločnik, in which Balkan country?

Serbia: if its date of about 4650 BC holds, the foil puts tin bronze in Europe some 1,500 years before the Near East.

Before tin, what element was commonly alloyed with copper to make an early bronze?

Arsenic: arsenical copper was harder than pure copper and could look silvery, but working its ores released toxic fumes, and tin later took over.

Which English county was a major source of tin for ancient Europe's bronze-makers?

Cornwall: tin is much rarer than copper, so serious bronze-making depended on shipping tin over long distances from a few regions like this one.

Which award statuette, made of plaster during World War II, has been cast in bronze since 2016?

The Oscar: after the war, the Academy invited winners to swap their plaster figures for metal ones.

Which raiders, recorded fighting Egypt's Ramesses III, are among the suspects for the Late Bronze Age collapse?

The Sea Peoples: early scholars blamed them as the main cause of the collapse, but they are now usually seen as one factor among several.

Which bell cracked at its very first stroke and was then recast twice by local workmen?

The Liberty Bell: its recasters thought the metal too brittle and added copper, but that casting was unsatisfactory, so they recast it again.

What useful property makes bronze suited to hammers and wrenches used near flammable vapours?

Beryllium copper shares the trait, and bronze wool is used on oak where steel wool would discolour the wood.

Which chloride-driven corrosion can completely destroy a copper-alloy artefact if left untreated?

Bronze disease: despite the name, bacteria aren't to blame; chlorides, often from seawater or salty soil, react with the metal to make a fungus-like green powder.

Why does bell metal contain far more tin than most bronzes?

It makes the metal resonate: more tin makes a bell ring on longer after each strike, though too much tin turns the metal brittle.

Which bronze was left uninvited outside the New York Stock Exchange, then moved two blocks south?

Charging Bull: police said it had no permit, and the exchange hired a trucking company to haul it away before the city found it a home on Bowling Green.

Which cymbal maker, founded in Constantinople, moved its business to Massachusetts in the 20th century?

Zildjian: an Ottoman sultan bestowed the family name on the founder, an Armenian alchemist, and the company still carries it four centuries on.

Which London bell cracked soon after it first chimed and was then turned so its hammer struck elsewhere?

Big Ben: a square of metal was cut out around the crack, and the bell has struck the hours ever since, crack and all.

The Artemision Bronze, pulled from the sea off Greece, most likely shows which god, though some say Poseidon?

Zeus: the raised right hand is empty, and it once held either a thunderbolt for Zeus or a trident for Poseidon, which is why the debate goes on.

Which US city hosted the first Olympics to award gold, silver and bronze medals for the top three places?

St. Louis: its Games were spread over four and a half months and got lost amid the chaos of a World's Fair.

Which wedding anniversary is traditionally associated with bronze?

Eighth: a full year-by-year gift list is a 20th-century invention, and American jewellers helped build it to sell more gifts.

Which bronze fountain figure owns more than 900 costumes, now displayed in a museum of their own?

Manneken Pis: his outfits arrive as official gifts, and he is changed into them on a published schedule through the year.

Which Assyrian king, famed for besieging Jerusalem, claimed to be the first to cast colossal bronze statues in two-part moulds?

Sennacherib: he rebuilt Nineveh as his capital, and some scholars suggest the famous Hanging Gardens were really his gardens there, not Babylon's.

Why do so few large ancient Greek bronze statues survive?

They were melted down for reuse: the metal stayed in demand, which is why far more ancient stone sculpture has survived.

Where were the Riace bronzes, two rare original Greek warrior statues, found?

In the sea off Calabria, Italy: a diver, Stefano Mariottini, spotted part of a bronze figure poking out of the sand off Riace Marina.

The Colossus of Rhodes was a bronze statue of which god?

Helios: Rhodes raised the statue to celebrate beating off a long siege by Demetrius I of Macedon.

What destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes?

An earthquake: Strabo says the Rhodians obeyed an oracle and did not raise the fallen statue again.

The bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius survived because medieval Rome mistook him for whom?

Constantine the Great: the medieval Church revered him as the first Christian emperor, and the original statue now stands indoors in Rome's Capitoline Museums.

Which Russian ruler does the Bronze Horseman statue depict?

Peter the Great: its pedestal, a huge granite boulder called the Thunder Stone, was hauled to Saint Petersburg from nearby Lakhta.

Rodin's bronze The Thinker was originally conceived as part of which larger work?

The Gates of Hell: the figure was first called The Poet and is said to have shown Dante above the doorway, pondering his poem.

Which small bronze figurine was found at Mohenjo-daro, the Indus Valley city?

Dancing Girl: in 2016 a Pakistani barrister petitioned Lahore's High Court for her return, claiming she was taken on request about 60 years earlier and never sent back.

The Benin Bronzes come not from today's Republic of Benin but from which country?

Nigeria: they adorned the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in today's Edo State, and many of the so-called bronzes are really brass.

Most Benin Bronzes left Africa after a punitive raid by troops from which country?

Britain: the raid followed the ambush of a British consul's party on its way to Benin City, and the palace's art was seized and shipped to Europe.

Chinese ritual bronzes reached their peak under which dynasty?

Shang: the tomb of Fu Hao, a royal consort who also led armies on campaign, held 468 bronze objects.

Which Bronze Age find, dug up by treasure hunters, was later recovered in a police sting in Basel?

The Nebra sky disc: the looters were eventually convicted, and they said they had dug it up on a hilltop called Mittelberg.

What is the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek geared bronze device, the oldest known example of?

An analogue computer: it was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901, but its gear wheel went unnoticed until the following year.

The Uluburun shipwreck off Turkey, from the late 14th century BC, carried a cargo dominated by what?

Copper and tin ingots: a sponge diver found the wreck in 1982 after sketching 'metal biscuits with ears', the ingots' oxhide shape.

Which empire's capital, near today's Boğazkale in Turkey, fell during the Late Bronze Age collapse?

The Hittite Empire: decades earlier, after battling Egypt at Kadesh, it had signed a peace treaty with Ramesses II.

Which casting technique shaped the Riace bronzes and most large ancient Greek bronze statues?

Lost-wax casting: building the wax over a core left figures hollow, letting sculptors make far larger bronzes, often cast in parts and joined.

Phosphor bronze is commonly used for which marine component?

It also goes into musical instrument strings and electrical contacts, and some saxophones are now made from it.

Which Impressionist showed a figure of a 14-year-old student, dressed in real fabric and hair, in 1881?

Edgar Degas: after his death, his heirs had the Hébrard foundry cast his sculptures in bronze, so copies of her now stand in museums worldwide.

The giant bronze Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, shows a flag being raised on which island?

Iwo Jima: the photo it is based on shows the day's second flag raising on Mount Suribachi, when a larger flag replaced a small first one.

From which language did English borrow the word 'bronze'?

French: before the loan, Old English bræs covered both brass and bronze, and Middle English still lumped them together as 'bras'.

Which island, a chief source of copper in Roman times, gave copper its Latin name?

The island of Cyprus: Romans called copper aes Cyprium, 'metal of Cyprus', later shortened to cuprum, which gives copper its symbol, Cu.

Which architect designed New York's bronze-clad Seagram Building?

Mies van der Rohe: its public plaza was such a success that New York's 1961 zoning code let buildings grow larger if they provided plazas.

In 1992, what did the Royal Mint switch the bronze 1p and 2p coins to?

Copper-plated steel: rising copper prices drove the switch, which is why the newer coins are slightly thicker than the old bronze ones.

Which Greek poet described five Ages of Man, including a warlike bronze race before an age of heroes?

Hesiod: in his telling, the bronze race loved war, destroyed one another and went down to Hades leaving no name.

Which Hindu god, shown in famous Chola bronzes as Nataraja, has a 2-metre statue at CERN?

Shiva: in one reading, as Nataraja he destroys a worn-out universe so it can be created anew, and the CERN statue arrived as a gift in 2004.

Whose studio made the stained-glass lamps with bronze bases that became status symbols?

Louis C. Tiffany: many lamps credited to him were really designed by Clara Driscoll, whose role came to light only in the 2000s.

In which country are Aranmula kannadi, hand-made mirrors of polished bronze, crafted?

India: by local tradition, the craft began with temple artisans from Tirunelveli, in Tamil Nadu, who settled at Aranmula.

Bell bronze is used for the heavy 'tone ring' of which stringed instrument?

The roughly 3-lb ring gives the banjo its crisp lower register and bell-like treble.

Which bronze of copper, tin and zinc is named after the job it was originally used for?

Gunmetal: steel eventually replaced it for making guns, but its resistance to corrosion has kept it in use.

In which Olympic sport do both losing semi-finalists get bronze, because there is no third-place bout?

Boxing: the bronze-medal bout was dropped because boxers had too little time to recover between the semi-final and a third-place fight.

A 1995 study found third-placed Olympians were happier than which group?

Silver medallists tended to dwell on the gold they had just missed, while bronze medallists compared themselves with finishing without a medal.

Aluminium bronzes tend to have what colour?

Golden: Nordic gold, an aluminium bronze that contains no gold, is used for the euro's 10, 20 and 50 cent coins.

Which picture book inspired the bronze mother duck and ducklings in Boston's Public Garden?

Make Way for Ducklings: in 1991 Barbara Bush gave a copy of the sculpture to Raisa Gorbachev, and it was installed in a Moscow park.