Statue of King George III
Bowling Green, New York City, United States
Date of incident: 07/09/1776

On August 21, 1770, the British government erected a 4,000 lb., gilded lead, equestrian statue of King George III in Bowling Green, New York City’s oldest public park. It was commissioned in 1766 and sculpted by Joseph Wilton. In 1773, the city passed an anti-graffiti / anti-desecration law to discourage the repeated vandalism of the monument, and a cast-iron fence was built to protect it. On July 9, 1776, after the reading of the Declaration of Independence, soldiers under the direction of Capt. Oliver Brown of Wellsburg toppled the statue and cut it into pieces. Popular legend claims the statue was melted into 42,000 bullets for the Patriot troops in the American Revolution. The head was stolen by a British Loyalist and was sent back to England. Parts of the dismantled statue were discovered in the 1820s-1972; some of these pieces are currently preserved at the New York Historical Society.* The event has been immortalized in the 1859 painting by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel.

Sources
*http://www.connecticutsar.org/articles/king_georges_head.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Green_(New_York_City)