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How often do you think about the 1893 World's Fair?

57 points · 27 comments · bryanrasmussen

  1. pravj · · focus · HN ↗
    I have been maintaining a habit of reading about a place before travelling there. Mostly, it's either short story books telling about the cultural lore or history of the place.

    Recently, I visited Budapest and read a book with the same name by Victor Sebestyen.

    One critical topic stood out: "Budapest, the city, was rebuilt significantly in the two decades leading up to 1896 for a World Exhibition marking 1000 years of the country."

    It was not a proper world fair, but we can call it so.

    Since then, the same question has been running through my mind: what happened to world fairs, and why don't we have more of these?

    Operationally, it gives me chills to imagine a "concert/festival" [in today's terminology] of such scale being pulled off across months.

    1. NooneAtAll3 · · focus · HN ↗
      in a sense, World Fairs as a designated space-time for everyone in the world to get to has been replaced by Olympiads
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