Heat Wave ‘Melting’ Minuteman

The famous Minuteman statue, marking “the shot heard ‘round the world” that started the American Revolution, is oozing a sticky glue that makes it appear to be melting in the recent heat wave.

The 113-year-old statue by Daniel Chester French is secreting a mixture of animal resin and water that was trapped inside when the town made a cast of the sculpture in the 1970s.

“At first glance, it could look like (the statue) was melting,” said Robert Nash, superintendent of the Minute Man National Historical Park. “But it definitely is not melting.”

The goo, inside the base of the musket the Minuteman is holding, melted in 90-degree heat that has plagued New England recently.

The statue near the Old North Bridge was constructed in 1875 to honor an April, 1775, battle between British soldiers and the town’s Minutemen, or citizen soldiers. The 8-foot statue depicts a citizen soldier putting down a plow with his left hand and picking up a musket with his right hand.

In the 1970s, when a bomb was found and deactivated at the site, the town, worried that another bomb might destroy the statue, removed the structure and made casts of its individual pieces.

When making a cast of the musket, workers placed animal resin inside a hole where the barrel of the gun would fit so plaster would not run into the hole. Some of the resin was never removed and is now dripping out, requiring workers to give the statue a daily bath.