We’ve all heard of World’s Fairs, though I’ve always thought of it as some cool thing that stopped happening long before I was born. Turns out the World’s Fair is an ongoing thing, having been held in Japan in 2005 and being planed for Spain next year. The official name of it is “Expo,” and there’s a global governing body that has overseen the event 1851. It was the brainchild of Prince Albert. I hope to go to one some day.
Comments are closed.
My visits to the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens, NY remains the most memorable time in my childhood. I remember seeing things like picture phones, and phonograph records that could play movies (proto DVDs), and “It’s a Small World Afterall”. I was only 5 years old, and it was a blast.
There will likely be no more Expos in the U.S. since we are no longer members of the international organization that governs these. Congress stopped funding our membership a couple of years ago.
If you can get to one, particularly with a little kid, I highly recommend it!
Yeah! In 1984 they held the World’s Fair in New Orleans. It actually was quite a disaster and lost money, apparently. I was only about six so my main memories are the “kid wash” which sprinkled water on you when you ran through (it was effing HOT), getting my name written in Chinese characters on a very pretty fan, and the gondola! Read all about it here. Oh, man, but the gondola was cool. You crossed the river in these little cars – hiiiiigh over the river – if you were afraid of heights, this would not be for you! Especially since it had a distressing tendency to malfunction, in which case the cars would just STOP and hang over the river for … I heard stories of as long as a couple of hours. This didn’t happen to us when we crossed though, and man it was COOL.
It was intended to be permanent, available for use indefinitely after the fair was gone, but it too wasn’t profitable and so they busted it up and sold it. Terribly sad.
Anyone ever read Devil In The White City, by Eric Larson?
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/devilinthewhitecity/fair.html
All about the Chicago World’s Fair. Awesome Book.
When you travel, it may be worth checking out whether or not your destination has previously hosted the World’s Fair (or an International Expo, for some years). We all know about the wonders at Flushing Meadows, of course, but I was pretty impressed by the remnants of the 1929 Expo in Seville.