The World's Fair Opens in Queens

On April 22, 1964, the New York World's Fair opened at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, the same grounds Robert Moses had used for the 1939 fair. President Lyndon Johnson dedicated the United States Pavilion that morning while Nelson Rockefeller and Moses dedicated the New York State Pavilion, and about 90,000 people turned out in the rain, well under half the crowd organizers had predicted. The fair's theme, Peace Through Understanding, was symbolized by the Unisphere, a stainless steel globe still standing in the park today. Outside the gates, civil rights activists staged a sit-in, and the Congress of Racial Equality had called for a stall-in to snarl the highways leading to the fair, though only a handful of drivers actually joined it. Because the Bureau of International Expositions never sanctioned the fair, Britain, France, and Italy boycotted it outright, leaving just six countries with official pavilions.