From the start, the USA's Statue of Liberty was intended to be a symbol of freedom. Conceived by French intellectual Édouard de Laboulaye in 1865, it remains an icon and a beacon of hope to this day.

Here are 10 amazing facts that shed a little light on the American icon.

It took French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi over 10 years to design and make the 151ft-tall figure known in full as Liberty Enlightening the World.

The original idea for the statue was to celebrate the end of slavery in the US with the Statue of Liberty holding broken chains in one hand.

The idea wasn’t well received. But sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi included broken chains at the feet of the Statue of Liberty though they go largely unnoticed.

Access to the torch has been prohibited after the Statue of Liberty was damaged during the Black Tom explosion on July 30, 1916.

That copper torch was replaced with a copper flame coated in 24K gold in 1986. The original torch is on display at the Statue of Liberty Museum in New York Harbor.

The Statue of Liberty's iron skeleton was designed by Gustave Eiffel (the man who built the Eiffel Tower).