{"id":480455,"date":"2025-12-30T16:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T16:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/480455\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T16:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T16:59:09","slug":"philadelphia-launches-52-weeks-of-first-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/480455\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Launches 52 Weeks of First Celebrations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As commemorations for the 250th anniversary of the United States kick off in 2026, <a href=\"https:\/\/philadelphianewsroom.com\/tag\/philadelphia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Philadelphia<\/a> is recognizing this historic milestone with a year-long 52 Weeks of Firsts celebration.<\/p>\n<p>Inside a former North Philadelphia factory, more than two dozen artists working with Mural Arts Philadelphia have been painting 52 No. 1 sculptures, each honoring a Philadelphia first. These iconic civic milestones include the first zoo, university, and children&#8217;s hospital, as well as Philadelphia food milestones such as the first cheesesteak and water ice.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/6abc.com\/post\/fyi-philly-december-27-2025\/18309705\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">According to 6 ABC,<\/a>\u00a0Amy Needle, president and CEO of Historic Philadelphia, Inc., and co-chair of the Philadelphia Historic District 250th Committee, said the project is designed to celebrate this historic moment in U.S. history while encouraging people to learn more about Philadelphia&#8217;s history.<\/p>\n<p>When completed, the sculptures will be installed at 52 locations around the city.<\/p>\n<p>Every Saturday in 2026, a family-friendly First-ival will celebrate a different Philadelphia first. The First-ivals will feature giveaways, entertainment, and storytellers.<\/p>\n<p>Each sculpture will have a QR code that lets visitors access more information about the work.<\/p>\n<p>The first Philly First-ival is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 3, at the Athenaeum. It will honor America&#8217;s first hydrogen-filled balloon flight, followed by the Mummers Museum on Jan. 10 celebrating the first folk parade, the Mummers Parade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As commemorations for the 250th anniversary of the United States kick off in 2026, Philadelphia is recognizing this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":480456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-480455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115809587298244292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}