#monument

According to Wikipedia it's the tallest bronze Gandhi anywhere, put up by the state government at a cost of about 35 crore rupees — which, whatever the exchange rate, is a serious pile of money.

They say he was a poet who spent his summers on this stretch of coast and never stopped writing about the Atlantic. The carving behind him is a few lines of his own verse.

According to Wikipedia it honours Sweden's first Social Democratic prime minister — five metres tall, six wide, a whole rally cast in bronze with him mid-speech at the front.

It's a war memorial, apparently — a rooster on a brick column at the edge of a tiny Frisian village, with the names on a plaque partway up. I couldn't find why they chose a rooster of all things; if anyone knows the story, I'd love to hear it.

According to Wikipedia it stands on the riverbank in Lisbon where the ships actually set off for India and beyond, and it was put up to celebrate that whole age of sailing out to explore and trade — or to conquer, depending on who's telling it.

Apparently this was put up by the French occupying forces to honor Austrians who died resisting Nazi rule - but locals reportedly disliked it so much they gave it a mocking nickname of their own, and it was never officially opened.

He led the big Dublin workers' strikes back in 1913, and they say the pose comes straight from photos of him speaking to crowds. Apparently the stone underneath carries his line about the great only looking great because the rest of us are on our knees.