Genesis
The idea for a World's Fair in Knoxville came from the example of Spokane, Washington, which hosted a World's Fair in 1974. W. Stewart Evans, president of the Downtown Knoxville Association, came up with the idea of hosting a fair in Knoxville and presented it to the city government.
Knoxville Mayor Kyle Testerman appointed banker Jake Butcher to lead an exploratory committee on the fair, and Butcher served as the driving force behind the fair. Within the city, many people referred to the event as "Jake's Fair". The organizing body was the Knoxville Foundation Inc. There was skepticism about the ability of Knoxville, described as a "scruffy little city" by a national publication, to successfully host a World's Fair.
This was the second World's Fair to be held in Tennessee. The state's first endeavor was the Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897, held in Nashville.
Read more about this topic: 1982 World's Fair
Famous quotes containing the word genesis:
“Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”
—Bible: Hebrew Genesis 1:29.
But in a later context, God told the disgraced Adam, “and thou shalt eat the herb of the field” (Genesis 3:18)
“If only he would not pity us so much,
Weaken our fate, relieve us of woe both great
And small, a constant fellow of destiny,
A too, too human god, self-pity’s kin
And uncourageous genesis . . .”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)