50 Fun Facts About World's Fairs

In which part of London was the Great Exhibition of 1851 held?

Hyde Park. The organisers wanted a hall that could be taken apart afterwards, so the Crystal Palace was built from prefabricated iron and glass and later rebuilt elsewhere in London.

Who designed the Crystal Palace that housed the Great Exhibition?

Joseph Paxton made his name as a gardener. He scaled up the glasshouses he had built for the Duke of Devonshire, and his plan replaced a clumsier design the organisers had already accepted.

Which royal is credited with the idea for the 1851 Great Exhibition?

Prince Albert. The profit from his exhibition bought land in South Kensington, where the Victoria and Albert, Science and Natural History museums were later built.

Which famous diamond, presented to Queen Victoria a year earlier, drew crowds at the 1851 Great Exhibition?

Koh-i-Noor. Visitors found the stone disappointingly dull, so it was recut the following year to add sparkle, which left it far lighter.

Where was the Crystal Palace re-erected after the 1851 exhibition closed?

Sydenham. The rebuilt palace staged concerts, shows and the FA Cup final before a fire destroyed it in 1936.

Which city staged one of Europe's first industrial exhibitions, in 1791, for a Bohemian coronation?

Prague. The show in the Clementinum marked Leopold II's coronation as king of Bohemia, the same occasion for which Mozart wrote his opera La clemenza di Tito.

Which centenary did the Paris world's fair that unveiled the Eiffel Tower celebrate?

The storming of the Bastille. Because the fair honoured a revolution, many of Europe's monarchies declined to take part officially.

What new role saved the Eiffel Tower from demolition when its 20-year permit expired?

Radio antenna. Gustave Eiffel paid for wireless experiments from the top, and the tower proved so useful for military signals that the city renewed his permit.

Which French writer is said to have lunched at the Eiffel Tower because it was the one place he couldn't see it?

Guy de Maupassant. He had signed the 1887 artists' protest that called the planned tower useless and monstrous, alongside the composer Charles Gounod.

Which Picasso painting was first shown at the Spanish pavilion of the 1937 Paris world's fair?

Guernica. Picasso had been asked for a mural for the pavilion, and the bombing of the Basque town that April, during Spain's civil war, gave him his subject.

What nickname did the 1893 Chicago fairgrounds get from its pale neoclassical buildings?

The White City. Its marble-like palaces were temporary shells: the fronts were plaster mixed with cement and jute fibre, painted white.

Which ride debuted at the 1893 Chicago fair as an answer to the Eiffel Tower?

The Ferris wheel. George Ferris's giant wheel was a hit in Chicago, but it lost money afterwards, was moved to the 1904 St. Louis fair and was finally blown up with dynamite in 1906.

Which US president was shot while greeting visitors at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo?

William McKinley. An anarchist shot him as he shook hands in the fair's Temple of Music, and his death eight days later made Theodore Roosevelt president.

Which electrical system triumphed by lighting the 1893 Chicago fair?

Westinghouse's alternating current. Westinghouse won the contract by underbidding General Electric, and the generators it showed in Chicago became the basic tools of the power industry.

Which technology did RCA introduce to the American public at the 1939 New York World's Fair?

Television. RCA's network NBC began regular broadcasts with the fair's opening day, and Franklin Roosevelt's speech there was the first by a president to be televised live.

Which chewing gum was among products launched at the 1893 Chicago fair?

Juicy Fruit. William Wrigley had been giving gum away free with cans of baking powder, until the gum proved more popular than the powder he was selling.

Which city hosted the 1876 Centennial Exposition, America's first official world's fair?

Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence had been adopted a century before. President Grant and Brazil's Emperor Pedro II opened the fair by switching on the giant Corliss steam engine that drove its machines.

Which newly patented invention was demonstrated before Brazil's emperor at the 1876 Centennial Exposition?

The telephone. Alexander Graham Bell had patented it only three months earlier, and praise from the judges there, among them the physicist William Thomson, brought it international attention.

Which part of the Statue of Liberty was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition?

The right arm and torch. Visitors paid to climb to the torch's balcony, and the arm then stood in New York's Madison Square Park for several years.

Which Olympic first belongs to the Games held as part of the 1904 St. Louis world's fair?

The first on American soil. They had been awarded to Chicago, then moved to St. Louis to join the fair, and few athletes from outside North America made the trip.

Which treat is the 1904 St. Louis world's fair best known for popularising?

The ice cream cone. In the best-known story, waffle seller Ernest Hamwi rolled his pastry into a holder when the ice cream stand beside him ran out of dishes, though cone moulds had been patented earlier.

Which anniversary did the 1904 St. Louis exposition commemorate?

The Louisiana Purchase. The fair opened a year after the 1903 centenary, and it inspired the song and film Meet Me in St. Louis.

Which Paris structures built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle still stand?

The Grand Palais and Petit Palais. They replaced an exhibition hall left over from the 1855 Paris fair, and the nearby Pont Alexandre III was built for the same exposition.

Which Paris transit route opened for the 1900 exposition?

Métro Line 1. The city's first metro line opened a few months into the fair, and the Art Nouveau entrances that Hector Guimard designed for it still mark Paris stations today.

Which waterway's completion did the 1915 San Francisco exposition celebrate?

Panama Canal. San Francisco also used the fair to show the world how fully it had rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake.

Which annual baseball event began as a one-off attraction for Chicago's 1933 Century of Progress fair?

The All-Star Game. A Chicago Tribune sports editor proposed it as a single 'Game of the Century' to go with the fair, and it proved so popular that it came back the next year for good.

What was the theme of the 1939 New York fair?

Building the World of Tomorrow. The fair opened on the 150th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration in New York, and four months later the Second World War began in Europe.

Which two structures formed the symbol of the 1939 New York fair?

Trylon and Perisphere. The gleaming spire and globe rose on a former ash dump, the 'valley of ashes' that F. Scott Fitzgerald described in The Great Gatsby.

Which company's Futurama exhibit showed a model city of the future at the 1939 New York World's Fair?

General Motors. The designer Norman Bel Geddes carried riders over a vast model of America as it might look around 1960, laced with automated highways.

Which Brussels landmark was built for Expo 58?

The Atomium. It was not meant to outlive the 1958 fair, but it proved so popular that it became a lasting symbol of Brussels.

What does the nine-sphere structure of Expo 58 represent?

An iron crystal, hugely magnified: 165 billion times, in fact. The spheres were first clad in aluminium, and only a renovation in the 2000s gave this monument to iron its stainless steel skin.

Which Seattle landmark was built for the city's Century 21 Exposition in 1962?

Space Needle. It began as a doodle by the fair's chairman, Edward Carlson, after he dined in a restaurant atop Stuttgart's broadcast tower.

Which future Hollywood star, then a child, kicks Elvis Presley in the shin in It Happened at the World's Fair?

Kurt Russell. It was his first film role, shot at Seattle's 1962 fair, and sixteen years later he played Elvis himself in a biopic made for TV.

Which Michelangelo sculpture was shown at the Vatican pavilion of the 1964 New York fair?

Pietà. Its trip to New York was a rare journey away from St Peter's, where a hammer attack in 1972 later put it behind bulletproof glass.

Which Disney attraction was created for the 1964 New York fair?

It's a Small World. Disney built the boat ride for the fair's UNICEF pavilion, sponsored by Pepsi, then moved it to Disneyland, where it reopened in 1966.

Which steel globe was the symbol of the 1964 New York World's Fair?

Unisphere. Its three rings trace the orbits of early satellites, because the globe was built to celebrate the dawn of the space age.

Which sports car was launched at the 1964 New York World's Fair?

Ford Mustang. Henry Ford II unveiled it at the fair, almost 22,000 were bought that same day, and its imitators came to be called pony cars after it.

Expo 67's theme came from Terre des Hommes, a memoir by the author of which children's classic?

The Little Prince. The memoir recounts Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1935 crash in the Sahara, the ordeal that later gave his children's tale its stranded pilot.

Which architect designed the modular Habitat 67 housing complex for Expo 67?

Moshe Safdie. Habitat 67 grew out of the master's thesis he had written as an architecture student at McGill University.

Which baseball team was named after a world's fair?

Montreal Expos. The team took its name from Expo 67 when it joined the major leagues two years later, and kept it until it moved to Washington and became the Nationals.

Which film format was first shown at the Fuji pavilion of Expo '70 in Osaka?

IMAX. Its Canadian founders had made multi-screen films for Expo 67, then built one giant-screen system instead and unveiled it in Osaka with the film Tiger Child.

Which anniversary did Seville's Expo '92 celebrate?

Columbus's voyage to the Americas. The fair was built on the island of La Cartuja, where the explorer is said to have stayed at the monastery before he sailed.

Which city's 1984 world's fair went bankrupt while it was still open?

New Orleans. It came two years after nearby Knoxville's fair and in the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, but it left the city a convention centre and a revived Warehouse District.

Which tower was built as the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville?

Sunsphere. Its globe is glazed in gold-coloured glass, and The Simpsons sent Bart and his friends to Knoxville to see the fair, more than a decade after it had closed.

Which Expo's 73 million visitors were still the world's fair attendance record as of 2025?

Shanghai 2010. It overtook Osaka 1970's 64 million, and to clear the riverside site the city had moved some 18,000 families and a shipyard that employed 10,000 workers.

Which city hosted Expo 2020, the first World Expo in the Middle East, a year late because of the pandemic?

Dubai. The organisers kept the name Expo 2020 for branding even though the gates opened in October 2021, and the fair went on to record more than 24 million visits.

Which city was elected in 2023 to host World Expo 2030?

Riyadh. It won 119 of 165 votes at the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions, though rival Busan had enlisted the K-pop band BTS to campaign for its bid.

Which theme did Expo 2015 in Milan adopt?

Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life. Milan won the right to stage the fair over İzmir, in a vote that had to be rerun after delegates struggled with the push-button voting system.

Osaka's Grand Ring at Expo 2025 was certified by Guinness as the world's largest architectural structure made of what?

Wood. The architect Sou Fujimoto ringed the site with Japanese cedar and cypress, joined by nuki, a traditional Japanese carpentry technique, alongside modern methods.

Which Central Asian city hosted the 2017 Specialised Expo on the theme 'Future Energy'?

Astana. Kazakhstan's own pavilion, Nur Alem, is now a Museum of Future Energy, and the rest of the site was turned into a financial centre.