The US metropolis of New York has honored its heroes in the fight against the pandemic with a confetti parade. In hot summer weather of over 30 degrees yesterday, 14 moving trucks and 260 groups – including doctors, medical workers, delivery men and educators – pulled over the festival route in Manhattan, sometimes in the rain of scraps of paper.
Onlookers on the roadside cheered them and held up posters saying, among other things, “Thank you, heroes” or “Courage, strength, hope”. Mayor Bill de Blasio also took part in the parade.
Promised last year
Already in April 2020 – at the height of the pandemic in New York – de Blasio had promised “the biggest, best parade” for when the pandemic in the metropolis was under control. “When the day comes when we can start the vibrant, beautiful life of this city again, the first thing we will do is a confetti parade for our health and rescue workers,” the mayor said at the time. “We will honor those who saved us.”
The tradition of the “ticker tape parades” in New York goes back to the opening of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. Back then, stock exchange traders spontaneously threw stock market ticker strips of paper – ticker tapes – out of their windows at the parade. Since then, sports teams or famous people have been celebrated with confetti parades.
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