In 1776 following a reading of the freshly written Declaration of Independence, a group of New Yorkers descended on Bowling Green in lower Manhattan and physically pulled down a statue of King George III. ...A Philadelphia paper reporting on the incident said that the leaden statue would be melted down to create bullets for the coming war—42,088 bullets, to be exact.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/the-history-behind-the-king-george-iii-statue-meme