27 years ago today the Knoxville World's Fair opened. With the theme of "Energy Turns The World", the fair was a huge deal that year...remember all those TV ads saying how "You've Got To Be There"? I remember wanting to go badly, mainly because I didn't have that much to do during the sumer of '82. Also, I had always been fascinated by World's Faris and their monorails and pavilions and fireworks. However, my dad was not interested, adding that it was "just a tourist trap".He was probably right but still it would have been fun to go up in the Sunsphere. I think I drew pictures of it all over my Algebra text book. Also, there were some miraculous inventions that were first seen at the fair, like Cherry Coke and touch screen monitors. The world has never been the same. If you're nostalgic like I am, I found this bizzaro photo along with others here.
What's remarkable is that is really was the last world's fair that was pretty popular and even turned a profit...though it was just 57$. Really. However, in Knoxville they are still paying off debt in the form of bonds issued nearly 30 years ago to get the whole thing up and runnning. And perhaps this is why World's Fair's have gone the way of the monorail....
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