This is the ugly-as-sin statue which began its life as Christopher Columbus, bound for Miami, Florida in time for the October 12, 1992 celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the New World. Luckily, when Miami officials actually saw the finished product, they immediately saw it for the eyesore it was (and for several historical inaccuracies) and refused to pay for it. So, for many years this statue lay in pieces in a freightyard in Europe. After a close call in which Puerto Rico nearly bought it, Mayor Yuri Luzkov had the city of Moscow buy it (at scrap-metal prices), cut Columbus' head off and replace the head with the likeness of Peter the Great. So now the statue stands on an offshoot of the Moscow River, as a symbol of the power of Peter the Great's great naval fleet, which incidentally, never existed. But, it's something more for tourists to take pictures of....