World's Fairs
Baby Incubators: From Boardwalk Sideshow to Medical Marvel
If you headed to Coney Island at the turn of the century, you might wade in the water, eat some ice cream, or try out a rollercoaster at the newly opened amusement park, Luna Park. But your boardwalk promenade might also include a visit to the equivalent of a fully functional ...read more
The Legacy of the 1964 World’s Fair, 50 Years Later
1. Videoconferencing Visitors to the Bell System Pavilion were awed by demonstrations of the company’s Picturephones, which allowed callers to see each other on small television monitors. Decades before FaceTime and Skype made videoconferencing commonplace, Bell’s experimental ...read more
Chicago Was Home to a Serial Killer During the 1893 World’s Fair
1. Chicago had to beat out a number of other cities to get the fair. In the late 1880s, Chicago, St. Louis, New York and Washington, D.C. all submitted bids to host the 1893 fair, but the race was soon narrowed to New York and Chicago. Big Apple financial titans including ...read more
New York World’s Fair opens
On April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair opens in New York City. The opening ceremony, which featured speeches by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and New York Governor Herbert Lehman, ushered in the first day of television broadcasting in New York. Spanning 1,200 acres at ...read more
The General Lee jumps into history in “The Dukes of Hazzard”
On November 11, 1978, a stuntman on the Georgia set of “The Dukes of Hazzard” launches the show’s iconic automobile, a 1969 Dodge Charger named the General Lee, off a makeshift dirt ramp and over a police car. That jump, 16 feet high and 82 feet long (its landing totaled the ...read more
First McDonald’s drive-through opens in Beijing
On January 19, 2007, Beijing, China, the capital city of the planet’s most populous nation, gets its first drive-through McDonald’s restaurant. The opening ceremony for the new two-story fast-food eatery, located next to a gas station, included traditional Chinese lion dancers ...read more