1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,320 More than 130 years ago, the city of Chicago, Illinois, seemed too grand to be real. 2 00:00:05,860 --> 00:00:11,060 This was the location of the 1893 World's Fair, also known as the Columbian Exposition. 3 00:00:11,820 --> 00:00:16,560 At the heart of this historical phenomenon was an ephemeral metropolis known as the White City. 4 00:00:17,120 --> 00:00:23,280 The fairgrounds sprawled over 600 acres, featuring more than 200 monumental structures that defied imagination. 5 00:00:23,980 --> 00:00:27,920 The manufacturers and liberal arts building alone covered nearly 32 acres. 6 00:00:27,920 --> 00:00:37,220 With the capacity to fit four of the great Roman Colosseum inside and seat 300,000 people, its vastness was almost incomprehensible. 7 00:00:38,240 --> 00:00:47,900 One of the event's most iconic images is the 65-foot golden statue of the Republic, gleaming in the sun and towering over the central lagoon of an elaborate canal system. 8 00:00:48,960 --> 00:00:56,920 Borrowing ideas from ancient Venice, visitors could cover more territory by traveling in Venetian-style gondolas through the canals that spanned most of the fairgrounds. 9 00:00:57,920 --> 00:01:03,380 Norway even sailed a full-sized replica of a Viking ship across the ocean to be put on display. 10 00:01:04,340 --> 00:01:11,020 Approximately 27 million people from around the world were introduced to foods that have since become universally recognizable, 11 00:01:11,540 --> 00:01:18,520 such as peanut butter, Hershey's chocolate, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Cracker Jacks, Juicy Fruit Gum, and Vienna sausages, to name a few. 12 00:01:18,520 --> 00:01:25,440 The integration of electrical power into nearly every aspect of our lives can, in many ways, be traced back to this event. 13 00:01:25,980 --> 00:01:34,020 Electricity lit the night, with the grounds illuminated by more than 100,000 incandescent light bulbs, a recently patented invention at the time. 14 00:01:34,020 --> 00:01:41,980 Technological marvels such as the first practical electric automobile and the first electric kitchen with an automatic dishwasher were also introduced. 15 00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:49,580 The entertainment area brought to the public the concept of amusement parks, with attractions, sideshows, international villages, 16 00:01:49,860 --> 00:01:55,380 and the first widespread use of souvenir merchandise like postcards, coins, and other memorabilia. 17 00:01:56,240 --> 00:02:00,940 Interestingly, spray paint and the concept of whitewashing can also be traced to the fair. 18 00:02:00,940 --> 00:02:08,400 The very first Ferris wheel was created for the event by bridge builder and steel magnate George Washington Gail Ferris. 19 00:02:09,020 --> 00:02:14,580 As the story goes, he sought to rival the Eiffel Tower, the highlight of the 1889 Paris Fair. 20 00:02:15,380 --> 00:02:24,260 At 264 feet tall, his wheel could accommodate 2,160 people at a time and offered panoramic views of the entire fairgrounds. 21 00:02:24,260 --> 00:02:30,320 The precursor to the electric moving sidewalk from the 1900 Paris Expo was also debuted in Chicago. 22 00:02:30,940 --> 00:02:36,900 It was constructed on the pier to save people from having to walk the 2,500-foot-length to and from their steamships. 23 00:02:37,720 --> 00:02:43,180 Much like its successor in Paris, there were multiple platforms moving at different speeds in a looping circuit. 24 00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:51,980 The first platform was for standing and moved at only 3 miles per hour, while the second, fitted with benches, moved slightly faster at 6 miles per hour. 25 00:02:51,980 --> 00:03:00,200 As we delve deeper into the world's fair events, a pattern begins to emerge, one that seems to defy the conventional history we've all been taught. 26 00:03:00,760 --> 00:03:11,720 In cities all over the world, we consistently see the same grand and ornate structures, civil engineering and infrastructure projects, being constructed on a colossal scale within an impossible time frame. 27 00:03:11,720 --> 00:03:20,500 Less than 30 years after the Civil War, we find cities like Chicago looking as if they could be part of Vatican City or anywhere else in Old World Europe. 28 00:03:20,500 --> 00:03:28,540 Yet we're told that everything was built using wood, plaster, and temporary materials, with the intention of demolishing them when the fair ended. 29 00:03:29,420 --> 00:03:35,760 However, without exception, some isolated buildings still stand today because some were constructed with permanent materials. 30 00:03:36,400 --> 00:03:37,580 Everything else got destroyed. 31 00:03:37,580 --> 00:03:44,720 But we get a glimpse of the craftsmanship involved through structures like the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry. 32 00:03:45,540 --> 00:03:53,260 In Chicago's case, the majority of the fairgrounds didn't need to be demolished because they were conveniently destroyed by fire a few months after the event ended. 33 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:56,480 Why were certain ones constructed from permanent materials? 34 00:03:56,960 --> 00:04:00,720 And why did they so often hold the title of the world's largest building at the time? 35 00:04:00,720 --> 00:04:07,460 It raises the question, how could the world's largest buildings have been constructed using mostly temporary materials? 36 00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:17,900 Are we to believe that just over a century ago, people made a habit of building some of the largest, most magnificent, and ornate buildings ever seen, only to use them for a few months? 37 00:04:18,360 --> 00:04:26,640 Even if we disregard the buildings themselves, the earthworks involved in these projects would challenge modern capabilities and equipment under such tight timelines. 38 00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:30,680 And most importantly, why would they do all of this just to destroy it? 39 00:04:31,220 --> 00:04:41,520 Could the world's fair events have been the perfect cover to hide the remnants of a unified global system that existed before the upheaval of the Civil War and two world wars were used to reshape our world? 40 00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:48,880 The similarities between the narratives surrounding the fairs, the architecture, and the scale all seem to point to something more than coincidence. 41 00:04:49,400 --> 00:04:53,360 It suggests a carefully orchestrated erasure of a past we were never meant to remember. 42 00:04:53,360 --> 00:05:00,920 We have to ask ourselves, how much of our history has been rewritten, what has been lost, and how much has been hidden in plain sight?