The World's Columbian Exposition In Chicago 1893

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The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago 1893, to honor Christopher Columbus's 400th anniversary since he arrived in America in 1492. This influenced the traveling carnival industry in many ways, moreover the Exposition had games, attractions, rides, and many other things that you see at many carnivals today.
The Exposition was very large stretching over six-hundred acres long. Many people also attended the exposition with approximately twenty-seven million people who participated in the event.
One of the attractions introduced at the event was the Captive Balloon which allowed fifteen people at a time to soar up to fifteen hundred feet. Another attraction introduced at the Exposition was the first ferris wheel ever built which …show more content…
The developer at first was Paul Cornell but when the plans were burned in a fire, the project was given to a young music promoter Sol Bloom, who turned it into a fair. This contributed to the lexicon of the american language because the Midway Plaisance was the location of the first fair, and the word midway was used describe carnivals/fairs that had games, sideshows, and more.
The nickname of the Exposition was the”White City”. It was given this nickname because the buildings were all painted a chalky white.
There was seventeen carnivals 1902, and then forty-six in 1905, and by 1937 there was about 300 traveling carnivals around the world.
The difference between a carnival and a fair is that a fair is more of about displaying and selling items and a carnival is more of a show.
When the fair ended a fire went through the fairgrounds destroying most of the buildings. All the other buildings were destroyed …show more content…
Back in the day carnivals were a good distraction for kids who wanted to play games and win prizes. Nowadays modern kids(with low attention spans) are bored with the idea of going to a traveling carnival when they can do something like play lazer tag. P.T. Barnum was one of the first people to capitalize off of freak shows/sideshows. He popularized it by fabricating stories for the “freaks” and showing them to whoever paid. William Henry Johnson whose stage name was Zip the Pinhead was born with a cylinder shaped head and advertised as the missing link between humans and apes. Chang and Eng Bunker also known as the siamese twins who were seen as strange conjoined twins. Sideshows started to lose popularity at basically died of during the 1950s, here’s why. First people had other distractions at the time(movies, tv, etc.) that steered them away from sideshows. Also scientists started offering diagnosis saying that these magic freaks just had diseases that could be scientifically explained. And lastly when disability rights were rising it was widely frowned on to be laughing at people's physical
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