Picture it. New York City, 1924. You loaded up the family and drove your Ford Model-T through the dusty streets of Manhattan to witness the newest American spectacle alongside 10,000 other holiday revelers: a “retinue of clowns, freaks, animals and floats, [and] the bewhiskered man in red,” otherwise known as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Little did these merrymakers know that on this exact spot, 73 years later, future generations would witness the brutal execution of a children’s icon at the hands of local police.

The New York Times reporter who attended the inaugural event, no doubt sporting a jaunty fedora and pencil mustache, experienced a parade with far less fanfare than the extravaganza of today. He likely wasn’t, for instance, advised to wear an adult diaper in case nature

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