And on this Wednesday, I'm here to talk about the World's Fair that happened in 1964 and 1965. Do you remember what city it was in? Do you remember what city it was in? I do.
It was in New York. And that's what we're going to talk about on the Daily Grateful, because I'm grateful for all the innovations that came out of that thing. It took my sippy sippy while the music was playing the Daily Grateful. I am your just hanging out kind of host.
I'm Michael Kross. 1964, 1965, New York World's Fair. But was it the World's Fair? Because there are people who say it really wasn't the World's Fair.
You know why they say that? I did not know this. It was not sanctioned by the Bureau of International Exhibitions, the BIE. And because of that, a lot of countries chose not to show up.
But there was a lot of cool stuff there. All right. Oh, and by the way, because a lot of countries didn't show up, the thing did not make any money. And by the way, some people made a ton of money off of it.
My friend, John Tenuto. By the way, look up John Tenuto on YouTube. Just trust me. John Tenuto on YouTube.
Trust me. He was my first friend when I moved to this town in 1965, where I reinvented myself. And anyway, his dad became a millionaire because of the World's Fair. You know why?
He tore the damn thing down. When it was all over with, he tore it down. His company. He got a company that tore things down.
That's what they did. They didn't build things. They tore things down. And the biggest account he ever had was the New York World's Fair, which really wasn't a World's Fair.
But it was World's Fair, because the World's Fair, the theme, I understand this is 1964 and 65. The theme was peace through understanding with the focus on man's achievement of a shrinking grove, grove, yeah. Globe and expanding universe. How about that?
General Motors has an exhibit there called Futurama, which I think later turned into a cartoon, didn't it? I don't know. You know, it showed you get into a General Motors car. It wasn't really a, you know, and it took you through future cities and transportation systems.
That's pretty cool. Ford had the Magic Skyway. Why didn't my parents take me to the World's Fair? We lived in Michigan.
It wouldn't have been that big. Oh, no. My dad was going to Barney's bar in Banfield. We're not going to the World's Fair.
No, no, no, no, no. It would have been a sacrifice. I'd have taken my kids to Disney World a billion times. But anyway, I made the sacrifice.
But anyway, Ford's Magic Skyway designed by Walt Disney, the ride allowed visitors to sit in Ford convertible and travel through time. Wow. Okay. From prehistoric time into the space age.
IBM, they had an early computer there, probably the size of my house. Okay. And you could go and play on the real computer. I don't know what it did because the computers back then didn't have screens.
It was weird. The Bell System Pavilion featured demonstrations on something totally outrageous, totally and completely outrageous. It was called the Picture Phone. It was an early prototype of video calling.
Now, who in their right mind would ever, ever, ever want to do picture calling, video calling. It's crazy. It's the damn thing I've ever heard of. Oh, wait a minute.
It's called FaceTime on my iPhone. I have one right here. I am holding it in my hand and I can FaceTime people. I can FaceTime my daughter right now.
She could be on a podcast. Should I do that? No, I'm not going to do that because she might cuss. And then I'd have to go and click the thing that says there's cussing.
Whenever I publish one of these things, you know, on the Internet, they ask if there's cussing and there's no cussing. But if there is cussing, I have to just mark that. You're allowed to cuss. You just have to let them know that you're cussing.
I don't know why. Space Park displayed a space exploration technology exhibit, including models of spacecraft and rockets. Wow. How cool is that?
We had rockets back then. It was pretty good. Walt Disney was a big player in his whole fair. Everything there was pretty much designed by the Disney people.
They were on top of most of it. Okay. And despite all of its challenges, and it had a lot of challenges, other than the fact that Mr. Tenuto got rich tearing it down, it left a lasting legacy.
Many of the ideas, like a telephone that you could have video calls with and things like that. And it was turned into a cultural theme park and fairgrounds that were transformed into fleshing Meadows, Corona Park with the Unispear remaining. How come I haven't gone to visit that? I've been to New York a gazillion times.
Why have I not gone there to get it? I'm so grateful to different technology. I am so grateful for all of the fun stuff that we have. I'm grateful that I knew about the World's Fair.
I used to watch it on television, you know? Walter Cronkright. We talk about it on Channel 3 News. It was very cool.
Oh well. You live in New York. I think I need to go to Flushing, New York. And I need to see.
Remember the globe? That was a big thing. World's Fair? World's Fair?
World's Fair? It turns out it wasn't really a World's Fair. And I'm so grateful for it. And by the way, they lost money.
They never recoup their costs. They just turned it over to his costs, but they lost money. Tomorrow is Thursday. And tomorrow we're going to talk about podcasting.
And that's going to be fun. Alright, I can go write a newsletter. Guess what I'm going to write a newsletter about. Yeah, you got it.
This.