Honoring Lafayette

Today is the birthday of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette (1757 – 1834), hero of the American Revolution and two separate revolutions in his native France. I'll forgive you if you're not as interested in him as I am at the moment. Everywhere I turn I seem to bump into him. Actually, you do too, only you may not have realized it. Here in New York we have this, for example:

As well as this:

And two blocks from my house in Brooklyn, there's this:

I made a kid get out of the way so I could take this shot but I forgot to tell him to move his scooter

Ah, that's more like it!

And I also came across this plaque on a recent trip to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was headquartered for a time. 

And there's more. I learned that my father's hometown Fayetteville, Tennessee is named after....Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is named after...the Marquis de Lafayette. (Duh! It never occurred to me. But take the French article "La" off the front of his name, and there you have it).