Wonder at the Answers to This World’s Fairs Quiz

The 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri was a celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. At the time of the fair, St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in the territory that had been acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. St. Louis intended the fair to showcase the progress the city had made in the century since it joined the union.

In 1886, inventor Josephine Cochran received a patent for a dishwasher that she created in a shed behind her house. It was the first dishwasher to use water pressure to clean dishes instead of manual scrubbing. Initially, her ingenious machine was only sold to hotels and large restaurants. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Cochran’s design became popular in homes.

Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair was dubbed the “White City” for the electric lights that illuminated the fairgrounds day and night. The lights and marvels of industry on display inspired L. Frank Baum to create “The Wizard of Oz’s” sparkling Emerald City. In his 1900 novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” Baum wrote, “[I]f you did not wear spectacles the brightness and the glory of the Emerald City would blind you.”

On April 30, 1939, the New York’s World Fair opened with a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, broadcast live by NBC from the RCA pavilion. The speech was transmitted from mobile camera trucks to the main transmitter on top of the Empire State Building. The broadcast was only shown inside the fairgrounds, but later that year, NBC began a regular slate of live programming.

Henry J. Heinz’s original tomato “catsup” debuted in Philadelphia in 1876 at a small booth with little fanfare. But at the next world’s fair in Chicago in 1893, he drew people to his booth by giving away free pickle charms with the Heinz logo. More than one million people flocked to the booth for a charm, and while there, they sampled ketchup. After that, the condiment took off around the world.

Cherry Coke debuted to the public at the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair, and X-rays were first unveiled at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. The first IMAX movie premiered at the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka Japan. Peanut butter did not debut at a world’s fair, but at a health sanitarium run by nutritionist John Harvey Kellogg in 1895.

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition was a six-month-long celebration of Tennessee’s 100th anniversary of statehood. The fair was held in Nashville, which was known as “the Athens of the South” due to its emphasis on higher education. The state marked the historic event with construction of an exact replica of Greece’s Parthenon, complete with replicas of the Elgin marbles. The replica also served as the fair’s Fine Arts Building, housing a total of 1,175 art objects.

At the 1964 fair in New York City, the Ford Motor Company gave the public the first glimpse of its newest car: the Mustang. The vehicle went on to set an industry record for sales during its first year. Ford expected to sell about 150,000. Instead, it sold a whopping 418,000 units. Since then, the Ford Mustang has become an American automotive icon.

London’s 1851 Great Exhibition is considered the first world’s fair because it was the first international exhibition. Representatives from Europe and the Americas displayed their latest wares and inventions forged in the fires of the Industrial Revolution. The fair was held in the Crystal Palace, a massive glass building that cast natural sunlight on objects that were usually confined to dark factories.

During the 1889 Exposition Universelle, France unveiled the Eiffel Tower to nearly 2 million fairgoers from around the world. At the time, the architectural feat was the tallest tower in the world — a impressive structure built specifically for the fair. To mark the occasion, the French newspaper “La Figaro” set up a print shop on the second floor to print a special daily newspaper every day of the fair.