World's Fairs & Expos Trivia

Long before theme parks and the internet, World's Fairs were how the public got its first real look at the future — new inventions, new architecture, even new snacks. This quiz tours the biggest expositions in history, from Victorian London to twenty-first-century Dubai.

The Fairs That Changed Skylines

Most fair structures were meant to be temporary, dismantled once the crowds went home. A few refused to leave. Gustave Eiffel's tower for the 1889 Paris exposition was originally slated for demolition after twenty years; it stuck around because it turned out to be useful for radio transmission, and then simply because Paris couldn't imagine itself without it.

• Eiffel Tower — built for the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle
• Space Needle — built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair
• Unisphere — built for the 1964–65 New York World's Fair
• Atomium — built for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair

A Showcase for New Inventions

World's Fairs functioned as the era's product launch event. The 1893 Chicago fair introduced the towering Ferris Wheel as an answer to Paris's tower, while the 1904 St. Louis fair is remembered for popularizing foods and gadgets that fairgoers had never encountered outside the exposition gates.

One Governing Body, a Century of Expos

Since 1928, the Bureau International des Expositions in Paris has sanctioned official World Expos, sorting them into categories and spacing them out globally. Its most recent headline event, Expo 2020 Dubai, actually opened in October 2021 after a pandemic-forced postponement — proof that even a century-old tradition had to adapt on the fly.