The 1964 World’s Fair, 50 Years Ago — Before The Storm

04/22/2014

The picture below was taken when 90 percent of Americans were white. I actually attended the 1964 World’s Fair, at the age of 6. BoingBoing.net, below says that in that era, the "world was more naive, more forward-thinking, rather than future-fearing." As I say, I personally was 6, but everyone else was actually fearing the future, as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, the threat of nuclear war, the Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam. What they were not, unfortunately, afraid of, was the upcoming Immigration Act of 1965.

And if today, Americans aren’t worried about Amnesty, they may be more naive than their parents were.

The 1964 World’s Fair opened 50 years ago today

By Ethan Gilsdorf April 22, 2014

Walt Disney’s "It’s a Small World." The "Carousel of Progress." Billy Graham’s religious film "Man in the 5th Dimension." Full-scale models of the engines of a Saturn V rocket. Wisconsin’s "World’s Largest Cheese. A US Royal tire-shaped Ferris wheel. A recreated medieval Belgian village. DuPont’s musical review "The Wonderful World of Chemistry.” Intricate miniature dioramas of a possible world in the near-future, Futurama II, presented by General Motors.

All of these exhibits and pavilions, nutty ideas and contradictions were on display at the 1964-65 World’s Fair. Today marks the 50th anniversary of that fair, which first opened on April 22 in New York’s Flushing Meadows. The fair showed visitors a “spectacle that embodied the innovative, lunacy, hope, and fear of the Sixties,” according to Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America, a new book New York City journalist Joseph Tirella.

Perhaps the world all seems closer today, with the ease of international travel and the Internet. There’s no need for a foreign government to exhibit exotic wares in a funky cheese-shaped pavilion or hand out Belgian waffles when we can get our choice of gourmet items at Whole Foods. In 1964-65, the world was more naive, more forward-thinking, rather than future-fearing.[More]

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