1939 NY World's Fair Opening
The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was held in Queens, New York, at a site near today’s LaGuardia Airport and the CitiField baseball stadium . The area is generally known as Flushing Meadows and Corona Park. More than 44 million people visited over the two years. It was the first exposition to be based on the future, with an opening slogan of "Dawn of a New Day", and it allowed all visitors to take a look at "the world of tomorrow." Because international travel was expensive or required much time, the fair was the best opportunity many attendees would ever have to learn about faraway places and their cultures. World War 2 began just four months into Fair. Some countries, especially the Axis countries, withdrew their exhibits. This recording is a portion of the opening ceremonies of April 30, 1939. It is about 20 minutes in duration. A scan of the printed program for attendees to the ceremony is in The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/newyorkworldsfai00newy * * * These recordings are part of the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection. Mr. Hehn (1931-2020) was a pioneering collector of radio recordings when the hobby emerged in the 1960s. Digitizing his collection of reel tapes and discs is the effort of a wide range of North American volunteers, and includes assistance of some international collectors. The groups supporting this effort with their funds, time, technology and skills are the Old Time Radio Researchers and a small group of transcription disc preservationists who refer to themselves as the "The Knights of the Turning Table."
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.