1. By April 30, 1939, the Empire of Japan had been fighting in China for nearly two years and had declared its intention to conquer all of East Asia. Shanghai, Nanking, and Canton had fallen. French Indochina would be next.

[Holocaust Ency pic]

2. By April 30, 1939, Hitler had reinstituted conscription and moved troops into the Rhineland, both violations of the Versailles Peace Treaty. He had annexed Austria.

[from our report: https://look.substack.com/p/the-new-york-worlds-fair-of-1939]

3.British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had secured Hitler’s promise of “peace for our time” with the signing of the Munich Agreement, but Czechoslovakia would fall to Nazi Germany soon thereafter.

4.But on April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair would open on a 1,200 acre site in Flushing Meadows, Queens, and all the major nations, other than Germany, would participate.

5. The Fair’s theme was “The World of Tomorrow,” and over 200,000 people would show up on the first day to to get a glimpse of the future.

It was the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration; and it would be the world’s last big party before the war.

6. Two immense, stylized structures in the center of the fairgrounds— the Trylon and Persisphere — dominated the horizon. They contained a large diorama, called “Democracity,” depicting the utopian city of the future.

[our report: https://look.substack.com/p/the-new-york-worlds-fair-of-1939]

7. Spreading out from the Trylon and Persisphere were elaborate exhibits from the world’s governments and industries. Promise, wonder and titillation could be found everywhere.

8. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s opening day speech was broadcast on two hundred television sets stationed across New York City. The public could see this new invention at the RCA pavilion. Albert Einstein gave a speech on cosmic rays.

9.The British pavilion displayed an original copy of the Magna Carta [which would later be stored in Ft. Knox, for safe-keeping, until the war’s end].

10.Britain’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, parents of the reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, visited the Fair on June 10, 1939. The next day, they joined President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his home in Hyde Park, New York, for hot dogs, beer and a few days rest.

11.Frank Buck’s Jungleland offered Fair-goers camel rides and displayed an eighty-foot ‘monkey mountain’ housing 600 monkeys. The ‘Dream of Venus’ pavilion, designed by the artist Salvador Dali, featured nearly-nude performers posing as living statues.

12. The Billy Rose Aquacade, featuring Johnny Weissmuller of Tarzan fame, offered a Hollywood-type show of synchronixed swimming in a large ampitheater with a live orchestra. [Weissmuller had won five Olympic gold medals in swimming.]

13.Bob Hermines’ Midget Band offered music played by ‘the world’s greatest little people.’

14. Westinghouse offered Fair visitors the chance to see ‘Elektro, the Westinghouse Moto-Man,’ perform tricks. The mechanical robot could walk, talk, and smoke a cigarette.

[our report: https://look.substack.com/p/the-new-york-worlds-fair-of-1939]

15. General Motors offered ‘Futurama,’ a model city from the year 1960, containing skyscrapers, double-decked streets and landing pads for helicopters and auto-gyros.

16. And in a feat of surreal optimism, the Fair commissioned Westinghouse to prepare a time capsule that would not be opened for five thousand years — not until the year 6939.

17. The 800 pound time capsule was made out of an alloy of copper, chromium and silver that was specially created for this project. Its contents were sealed in an insulated, air-tight glass envelope. It contained 75 types of fabrics, metals and plastic.

18. Literature, art, a Sears catalog, a dictionary, an almanac and twentieth century news articles were recorded on microfilm [a special viewer was included].

19. The time capsule also included 35 items from everyday life, including a copy of Life magazine, a kewpie doll, one dollar in change, a pack of Camel cigarettes, and a variety of agricultural seeds.

20. To aid discovery of the time capsule, over three thousand copies of a book listing the contents of the time capsule and describing its location were placed in libraries, museums and monasteries around the world.

21.A microfilmed copy of this book was placed inside the time capsule. It contained messages from e people considered important at the time, including Albert Einstein. Einstein’s message decried the existence of wide-spread world poverty and global warfare.

22In 1940, in its second season, the theme of the Fair was changed to reflect the growing international conflict. No longer promising a bright vision of the future, the Fair’s 1940 theme was “For Peace and Freedom.” The USSR Pavilion had been dismantled after the 1939 season.

23.The pavilions of Poland and Czechoslovakia did not reopen for the 1940 season. On July 4, 1940, two New York City police officers were killed in an explosion while investigating a time bomb left in the British Pavilion. [The bombing has never been solved.]

24.When the Fair closed on October 27, 1940, many Europeans employed at the Fair were unable to return home. Many stayed in the U.S. permanently. The Fair had had forty-four million visitors. The time capsule remains buried fifty feet under a marker placed on the fairgrounds.

25.The people who built the Fair in 1939 & most who came to see it had a “can do attitude,” a certain kind of driven optimism. As the second world war in their lifetime developed they nevertheless celebrated democracy & innovation while eating hot dogs and watching girlie shows.

26. There is a lot of defeatism in the air.
Have we lost our “can do attitude,” or has the world really begun to spin out of control?
I don't know.

27. This story came from a report we prepared on the 1939 World's Fair, which you can find here: https://look.substack.com/p/the-new-york-worlds-fair-of-1939

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