15 Statues That Celebrate Actual Heroes

It’s easier than you would think to tell a nice statue of a good boy apart from a nasty statue of a bad one

Jack Shepherd
Published in
7 min readJun 26, 2020

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Photos (L-R): Nevit via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0;Brent Moore via Flickr/CC BY 2.0

A statue, or monument, is a thing that we humans like to put up in a public place to celebrate someone who we think did a very good job of something. We also use them to show other humans what sorts of behavior we think everyone should emulate. It’s all terribly confusing, apparently, but if you learn how to look, you can quite quickly get the hang of spotting the nice ones that celebrate actual heroes, and weeding out the nasty ones that belong in the bottom of the ocean because they celebrate someone who did a big treason or other wickedness.

Here are a few salutary examples of both sorts.

✅ Tombili

Tombili was a street cat in Istanbul who became internationally famous for his relaxed posture and cool manner of leaning. He was a true hero and his statue is very good.

Photo: Nevit via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

🚫 Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest, on the other hand, was a slave trader and war criminal who became

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Jack Shepherd
Jack Shepherd

Written by Jack Shepherd

I have a newsletter about crossword puzzles and a podcast about rom-coms. Formerly editorial director @BuzzFeed. Email: JackAShepherd at gmail