John Harvard sits pretty in Harvard Yard, watching over students and tourists alike. His left shoe gleams, polished by thousands of hopeful hands rubbing it for luck.
But behind the statue lies a story of mistaken identity—actually, two.
First, John Harvard wasn’t the founder of Harvard University, just its most generous early benefactor. And second, when the time came to build the statue, no one knew what he looked like. So, they used the face of another man!
Despite this, the statue is said to be the third most photographed in the US, after the Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of Liberty.
Now that’s an impressive legacy—to become iconic, even when history got the details wrong!
#JohnHarvard #HarvardLegends #StatueWithAStory