Reax to London's Washington Statue: 'What Is He Doing Here?'

George Washington turned plenty of heads as he rolled across London's Trafalgar Square earlier this month. More than a few locals were flummoxed to see a life-size bronze statue of the first US president, who led a rebellion against British rule, taking a place among statues of British kings and heroes. "What is he doing here?" asked one onlooker, per the Washington Post. "We're not completely happy with America right now," so "I'm not really sure I want him here," said another. But the statue isn't new to Trafalgar—only returned. A replica of the one that stands in the Virginia Capitol, the statue was a gift from the state to its former colonizer in 1914, marking the 100-year anniversary of the treaty that ended decades of war between the US and UK.

"It was really more noticed when it disappeared" in May, a tourist guide tells the Post. "People were wondering if it was taken away because someone might throw something at it." Actually taken away for restoration and the construction of a new plinth, the statue of what one critic calls a "traitor to the crown" made quite a splash as it was returned on a flatbed truck. Some thought Washington himself would take issue with the statue. According to local legend, he vowed to never again set foot on English soil, so the statue was initially set on dirt from Virginia. It doesn't appear that story was true, though this time, the statue was indeed placed on soil from Virginia—Mount Vernon, specifically, per the Post.

Texas A&M University historian Troy Bickham suggests the place of honor isn't as strange as some onlookers believe. He notes King George III called Washington, an unpaid politician who pried America from his own hands, "the greatest man of the age." And his grandson, George V, personally chose Trafalgar Square as the statue's home around the time World War I started, a war that made the US and UK into true allies. "Why do we as Englishmen gladly welcome the statue of Washington? It is because he was a great Englishman, one of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived," British Foreign Secretary George Curzon said at the time. Some of those words adorn the new plinth, which sits above a time capsule enclosing the artwork and essays of 11 Virginia students, per WRIC. (More George Washington stories.)