Kings of the air

摘要

At the 1904 louisiana purchase expositiong in St. Louis, Missouri, a seven month long world's fair celebrating Thomas Jefferson's epic real estate deal a century earlier, more than 19 million visitors were treated to exhibitions of wonders from across the country and around the world. Underwritten by $ 15 million in stock purchases and federal and state funding, the fair was, in the words of one newspaper headline, "The Most Stupendous Entertainment the World Has Ever Known." Not only did it host the 1904 Olympic games, it also featured an aeronautic competition, with a $100,000 grand prize. That's how the first public, powered flight in the United States came to take place in St. Louis before thousands of witnesses and how international aeronautical celebrity wore, for a time, a distinctly American face.