They were an almost common occurrence years ago but have tapered off of late.
New York has held over 200 of these parades since 1886 when a dedication parade was held in New York City for the Statue of Liberty on the 28th October.
Parades are traditionally held along a section of Broadway known as the “Canyon of Heroes”,
The U.S. Olympic Games athletes of the 1912 Summer Olympics held in Stockholm were the first sports team to have a ticker tape parade.
Charles Lindbergh was honoured with one , following solo transatlantic flight in 1927
A parade was held to celebrate the victorious end of WWll in 1946.
1951 saw a parade honouring women of the armed forces.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, celebrated the moon landing in 1969.
1979, Pope John Paul ll, was honoured.
1985 The Vietnam Veterans were honoured.
1990 saw Nelson Mandela paraded after his release from a 27 year term of imprisonment for sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government.
1991 saw the Gulf War and Korean war veterans honoured in two separate parades.
Since the year 2000 the New York Yankees Baseball team has been paraded for winning the MLB competition 4 times.
In 2021 on July 7 the Healthcare Professionals and Essential Workers for their labour during the Covid-19 pandemic were thanked with a ticker Tape Parade.
Are Ticker Tape Parades held in other countries?
As far as I can tell, Australia holds parades predominately for sports teams and there is no mass throwing of ticker tape.
Australia’s Vietnam Veterans were finally honoured with a welcome home parade in 1987, 14 years after the end of the war.
One thing I have wondered, Ticker Tape - the paper ribbon upon which stock quotes and trades were mechanically reported on a telegraphic printing machine.
Were there people assigned to tear apart these rolls?
Sure, many intact spools were thrown but there seemed to be a whole lot of individual pieces of paper strewn from on high.
Many, many decades ago one of my jobs was to maintain teleprinters which produce what the Yanks call ticker tape. In the UK and Australia the tape was cut up and pasted on a form to produce a telegram or in offices was also torn off when the information was complete, very few companies just kept the tape as a long length as I recall.
From memory there were five bits of information needed to complete a single character, the whole device was purely electro/mechanical. Good typists had to slow down because they could jam the machine if they typed too fast because five metal bars had to physically slide across as each key was pressed.
I used to know a lot about them but these days is is just a very faded memory
There have been ticker tape parades in Sydney certainly in the 1960s. As you say mostly for athletes but also I recall one for LBJ (well, I think it was LBJ)
I don’t think they are common in U.K. - thank goodness!
I have never attended one - the only one I can recall hearing about was when Cardiff City (in Wales) had a Ticker Tape Parade for Armed Forces Day in 2010.
I found a photo of it online
I think all those bits of paper spoils the look of the Parade, to be honest - and all that litter to be cleared up afterwards!
I don’t know why Cardiff decided to chuck the litter on top of the troops as they were marching - I think it’s a bizarre thing to do.
No, they are not and that’s excellent in my book. I can imagine nothing worse than a crowd of loud people crammed together just begging to have their pockets dipped by the circulating professional thieves.
If I remember correctly people used to tear up pieces of paper and stuff them in their pockets before the game.
I don’t suppose there was much readily available ticker tape knocking about in Tottenham.
