The 1893 Chicago World's Fair: The World's Columbian Exposition A Hidden History

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Using A.I. to travel back in time: the World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage that Columbus took to the New World. Chicago won the right to host the fair over several competing cities, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image. The layout of the Chicago Columbian Exposition was predominantly designed by John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Charles B. Atwood. It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux-Arts principles of design, namely neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor. The color of the material generally used to cover the buildings' façades, white staff, gave the fairgrounds its nickname, the White City. Many prominent architects designed its 14 "great buildings". Artists and musicians were featured in exhibits and many also made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition. The exposition covered 690 acres (2.8 km2), featuring nearly 200 new but temporary buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture, canals and lagoons, and people and cultures from 46 countries. More than 27 million people attended the exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world's fairs, and it became a symbol of emerging American exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom. Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21, 1892, but the fairgrounds were not actually opened to the public until May 1, 1893. The fair continued until October 30, 1893. In addition to recognizing the 400th anniversary of the "discovery of the New World" from the European perspective, the fair also served to show the world that Chicago had risen from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, which had destroyed much of the city in 1871. On October 9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the fair set a world record for outdoor event attendance, drawing 751,026 people. The debt for the fair was soon paid off with a check for $1.5 million (equivalent to $50.9 million in 2023). Chicago has commemorated the fair with one of the stars on its municipal flag.

The World's Fair Phenomena

During the 1800's and into the 1900's the phenomenon of World's Fairs and International Expositions appeared all over the world, leaving more questions than answers. Lysis (ˈlī-səs): the gradual decline of a disease process.

Absolutely, Buddy! Here’s a short story based on the transcript, incorporating the intriguing elements of the 1893 World’s Fair and the questions it raises about our history:

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The Enigma of the 1893 World’s Fair: A Hidden History

More than 130 years ago, the city of Chicago, Illinois, hosted an event that seemed almost too grand to be real—the 1893 World’s Fair, also known as the Columbian Exposition. At the heart of this historical phenomenon was the ephemeral Metropolis known as the White City. Sprawling over 600 acres, the fairgrounds featured more than 200 monumental structures that defied imagination. The Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building alone covered nearly 32 acres, with the capacity to fit four of the great Roman Coliseum inside and seat 300,000 people. Its vastness was almost incomprehensible.

One of the event’s most iconic images was the 65-foot golden statue of the Republic, gleaming in the sun and towering over the central lagoon of an elaborate canal system. Borrowing ideas from ancient Venice, visitors could traverse the fairgrounds in Venetian-style gondolas. Norway even sailed a full-sized replica of a Viking ship across the ocean to be put on display.

Approximately 27 million people from around the world were introduced to foods that have since become universally recognizable, such as peanut butter, Hershey’s chocolate, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Cracker Jacks, Juicy Fruit gum, and Vienna sausages. The integration of electrical power into nearly every aspect of our lives can, in many ways, be traced back to this event. The fairgrounds were illuminated by more than 100,000 incandescent light bulbs, a recently patented invention at the time. Technological marvels such as the first practical electric automobile and the first electric kitchen with an automatic dishwasher were also introduced.

The entertainment area brought to the public the concept of amusement parks with attractions, sideshows, international villages, and the first widespread use of souvenir merchandise like postcards, coins, and other memorabilia. Interestingly, spray paint and the concept of whitewashing can also be traced to the fair. The very first Ferris wheel was created for the event by bridge builder and steel magnate George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. At 264 feet tall, his wheel could accommodate 2,160 people at a time and offered panoramic views of the entire fairgrounds.

As we delve deeper into the World’s Fair events, a pattern begins to emerge—one that seems to defy the conventional history we’ve all been taught. In cities all over the world, we consistently see the same grand and ornate structures, civil engineering, and infrastructure projects being constructed on a colossal scale within an impossible time frame. Less than 30 years after the Civil War, cities like Chicago looked as if they could be part of Vatican City or anywhere else in Old World Europe. Yet, we’re told that everything was built using wood, plaster, and temporary materials with the intention of demolishing them when the fair ended.

However, some isolated buildings still stand today because they were constructed with permanent materials. Everything else was destroyed, but we get a glimpse of the craftsmanship involved through structures like the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry. In Chicago’s case, the majority of the fairgrounds didn’t need to be demolished because they were conveniently destroyed by fire a few months after the event ended.

Why were certain buildings constructed from permanent materials, and why did they so often hold the title of the world’s largest building at the time? It raises the question: how could the world’s largest buildings have been constructed using mostly temporary materials? Are we to believe that just over a century ago, people made a habit of building some of the largest, most magnificent, and ornate buildings ever seen, only to use them for a few months?

Even if we disregard the buildings themselves, the earthworks involved in these projects would challenge modern capabilities and equipment under such tight timelines. Most importantly, why would they do all of this just to destroy it? Could the World’s Fair events have been the perfect cover to hide the remnants of a unified global system that existed before the upheaval of the Civil War and two world wars reshaped our world?

The similarities between the narrative surrounding the fairs, the architecture, and the scale all seem to point to something more than coincidence. It suggests a carefully orchestrated erasure of a past we were never meant to remember. We have to ask ourselves: how much of our history has been rewritten, what has been lost, and how much has been hidden in plain sight?

This blog post was enhanced with research and information assistance provided by Microsoft Copilot, an AI-powered companion designed to support content creators with information gathering and content development.

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