Paris pays homage to Jefferson, Parks

[tocqueville]

1 hour, 9 minutes ago

PARIS (AP) — France marked the Fourth of July by honoring Thomas Jefferson with a statue and Rosa Parks with a sports complex. The mayors of Paris and Washington did the honors.

"This is a great monument to a great American in a very important place in Paris," Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said as the bronze, 10-foot-tall statue of Jefferson was unveiled on the Left Bank of the Seine River, near the Solferino Bridge.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe called Jefferson a "universal man ... inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment." He called the third U.S. president "a great man, a great Parisian."

Jefferson lived in Paris before the French Revolution, serving as minister to the country in 1785.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060707/ap_on_re_eu/france_american_icons_fixed_1