Mail.com
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Tens of thousands of revelers are expected on New Orleans streets for parades and rowdy fun as Mardi Gras caps the Carnival season in a city with a celebration of its own, its 300th anniversary.
The anniversary of this Louisiana port city will feature prominently in Fat Tuesday’s festivities. Rex, New Orleans’ oldest parading Carnival group, is celebrating the tricentennial with 21 of its 28 floats commemorating its history from those who lived in the area before Europeans settled it in 1718 to the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Other floats in the Rex parade include one for St. Louis Cathedral, the descendant of a church built the year of the city’s founding, and the yellow fever, which killed more than 41,000 people between 1815 and 1905. Continue reading “Mardi Gras parade honors New Orleans’ tricentennial”