1939 World's Fair

It's not very common that I find eye-witness testimony about the material I write about.  Writing about events that took place decades or centuries a good offers an interesting glimpse into the past, but few are still around to tell about it.

This past weekend at my brother's wedding, I met an 88-year-old woman who told me she visited New York City once, 74 years ago.  The year was 1939 and she took a Greyhound bus from South Carolina to New York City to visit the 1939 World's Fair.  What was this event that was apparently compelling enough for her to endure a 3 day bus ride?

Souvenir Booklet of 1939 World's Fair

Stamp showing the "Perisphere"

People Entering the Perisphere

 The 1939 World's Fair took place on the current site of the Met's Stadium in Queens.  Over 44 million people attended the event.  At the center of the grounds was the "Perisphere" a dome-shaped construction which become symbolic of the 1939 World's Fair.  The 180 foot diameter dome featured "Democracity," a model city of the future, which was viewed from a moving escalator.

The 1200+ acre grounds for the event were divided into zones, including a Transportation zone, Communications and Business Zone, Food Zone, and Government Zone, with a focus on the future. 
The Transportation zone, for example, featured new automobiles from GM and Chrysler which could be viewed in a room cooled by air-conditioning, a novelty at the time.  The purpose of the event was to uplift the human spirit following the Great Depression of the 1930s and to strive to bring global harmonization to a world on the brink of warfare.

Grounds of the 1939 World's Fair

Plane Crash Into the Empire State Building

Long before the tragedy of 9/11, New York was shook by another plane crash.  On the foggy morning of Saturday July 28, 1945, just two weeks before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, the pilot of a US B-25 bomber became disorientated on his was to a routine personnel drop at Newark airport and crashed into the Empire State Building. 

The death toll was only 14 but could have been much higher had it occurred on a weekday when more people were at work.  The crash occurred at 9:40 am and carved a 18 x 20 foot opening in the Empire State Building, engulfing the building in flames.







One of the plane's engines landed in the elevator car, sending the elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver plummeting 75 stories (1000 feet).  Miraculously, she survived the fall, and her fall is recorded in the Guiness Book of World Records as the longest survived elevator fall.