7 Things You May Not Know About Ticker-Tape Parades

While ticker-tape parades are now meticulously scheduled, the first was anything but. On October 28, 1886, during a parade honoring the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, employees threw ticker tape from office windows along Broadway to join the celebration, giving the tradition its name. Celebrations continued intermittently over the following decades, with more formally organized events beginning in 1919 with a parade for Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII. For more than 35 years, Grover Whalen served as the city’s official host and organizer of the festivities. Today, New York City’s mayor decides who is honored with an official parade.

The ticker-tape parade is most closely associated with New York sports teams, but that wasn’t always the case. Athletes were not honored until 1924 and, before 1999, the parades primarily celebrated world leaders, military veterans and astronauts, as well as achievements in exploration, aviation and science.

The astronauts of Apollo 11 were honored in 1969 following their moon landing. Theodore Roosevelt was welcomed back from his yearlong African safari with a parade. Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, Pope John Paul II, John Glenn, Amelia Earhart, Queen Elizabeth II and John F. Kennedy are among the many individuals honored with ticker-tape parades.

Individual athletes have also been recognized, including Jesse Owens for his performance at the 1936 Olympics and Althea Gibson after winning Wimbledon in 1957. Major League Baseball’s Sammy Sosa, who finished second in the 1998 home run race, received a parade in recognition of his relief work in the Dominican Republic following Hurricane Georges.

Polar explorer Richard E. Byrd has been honored more than any other individual, receiving three parades. The first came in 1926 after his flight over the North Pole, which Byrd claimed was the first. The following year, Byrd took part in a double parade honoring two trans-Atlantic flights. In 1930, he was celebrated again for his flight over the South Pole and for leading his first Antarctic expedition.

Though known as ticker-tape parades, the celebrations themselves have not featured actual ticker tape in decades. The 1-inch-wide strips of paper were originally used by ticker machines to print stock quotes and other financial information. Because many brokerage firms and financial offices lined the parade route through lower Manhattan, workers tossed the discarded paper from office windows onto the crowds below. As stock exchanges transitioned to electronic displays in the 1960s, ticker tape fell out of use and was replaced by shredded paper and confetti.

Despite being relieved of command by President Harry S. Truman, Gen. Douglas MacArthur received one of the largest ticker-tape parades in New York City history in 1951. The celebration stretched 19 miles across Manhattan, drew an estimated 7 million spectators and generated 3,000 tons of paper.

Following the Allied victory over Japan in 1945, more than 5,000 tons of paper, confetti, cloth and other materials rained down on New York City, the most ever used in a ticker-tape celebration—roughly 100 times the amount generated by an average parade. Other especially paper-filled celebrations included those honoring astronaut John Glenn, General MacArthur, the return of American hostages from Iran in 1981 and the New York Mets after their first World Series championship in 1969.

The 2015 ticker-tape parade honoring the United States women’s national soccer team marked the first time a women’s team received the honor. The team earned the celebration after winning its third FIFA Women’s World Cup with a 5-2 victory over Japan on July 5, 2015. The U.S. women’s national soccer team was honored again with a parade in 2019 following its World Cup victory and, in 2024, the New York Liberty received a parade after winning its first WNBA championship.

Female athletes had previously been honored as individuals and as members of U.S. Olympic teams, but never before had a women’s team been recognized on its own. Before the U.S. women’s team’s parade, the last female athlete to receive an individual ticker-tape parade was Carol Heiss, a Queens native who won Olympic gold in figure skating in 1960.

In 2003, New York City marked the parade route with more than 200 slender black granite markers that note each parade’s date and a brief description—a New York version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Although some parades traveled routes other than the one-mile stretch of Broadway between the Battery and City Hall, known as the Canyon of Heroes, each is commemorated with a marker along the route.