Individual athletes have also been honored, including Jesse Owens for his performance at the 1936 Olympics and Althea Gibson after winning Wimbledon in 1957. Kennedy are a few more of the many individuals to receive a parade in their honor. And Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, Pope John Paul II, John Glenn, Amelia Earhart, Queen Elizabeth II and John F. Theodore Roosevelt was welcomed back from his African safari with a parade. The astronauts of Apollo 11 were honored in 1969 after the moon landing. The first athletes weren’t honored until 1924, and before 1999 the parades were primarily used to honor world leaders, military veterans and astronauts, and to celebrate achievements in exploration, aviation and science. The ticker-tape parade is most closely associated with New York sports teams, but that wasn’t always the case. Now, New York City’s mayor decides who is honored with an official parade. For more than 35 years, Grover Whalen played the role of official “greeter” and organizer of the festivities. Celebrations continued intermittently over the next few decades, with more formally scheduled events beginning in 1919 with a parade for 25-year-old Edward Albert, the Prince of Wales. On October 28, 1886, as the parade in honor of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty marched up Broadway, employees spontaneously threw ticker tape out of their office windows to join in the celebration, giving the tradition its name. While ticker-tape parades are now meticulously scheduled, the first ever was far from it.
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