Annie Turnbo Malone: was born on August 9, 1869 and was an African-American businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist who, in the first three decades of the 20th century, built a large and prominent commercial and educational enterprise centered around cosmetics for African-American women. Annie sold shampoos and hair-pressing irons to crowds in St. Louis for the 1904 World's Fair. She mentored Sarah (Breedlove) Walker, who created a `Hair Products Empire,' and was possibly the first true African-American millionaire.
Lewis F. Muir: Born Louis Meuer on May 30, 1883, he was a popular ragtime pianist, playing in St. Louis Honky Tonk saloons, in 1904. In common with Irving Berlin, Muir shared the ability to play the piano in just one key, and used a special piano that had a cranking mechanism under the keyboard to shift the keys.
Muir reportedly worked at the St. Louis Exposition.
Journalist L. Wolfe Gilbert and Muir got into an altercation in 1912, and to avoid fisticuffs, they Muir invited his adversary home to settle the arguemment on musical composition. That day,the two composed two songs which included a partially composed "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee," which was a huge hit. Muir died of tuberculosis on December 3, 1915 at the age of 32.
Cromwell Dixon: was born in 1892. He was an inventor who at a very early age could fix or build anything. Before he was 12, he had already built a mini-roller coaster and a motorcycle
In 1904, young Cromwell attended the St. Louis World’s Fair where he saw the balloon of aviation pioneer Thomas Baldwin which began his love for aviation.
At the age of 13, he began building his own dirigible in the garage behind his family’s University District home. By late 1910, after three years of exhibiting the Sky Cycle, Dixon’s interests began to shift from dirigibles to airplanes.
In August 1911, Cromwell received his pilot’s license and became the youngest pilot in the world. Dixon began performing daredevil acts, and raced trains and automobiles.
In a rickety airplane of wood, wire, and canvas, he set out in a dangerous flight to cross the Continental Divide. Climbing to an altitude of 7,000 feet, he became the first person to cross the Continental Divide in an airplane. His feat won him international acclaim and a prize of 10,000 dollars.
Cromwell died two days later at the age of 19. In Spokane, Washington, his plane flipped over and broke from a gust of wind. It fell 100 feet into a rocky ravine. Though he survived the initial crash, Dixon died hours later.
Lewis Chauvin: was an American ragtime pianist born on March 13, 1881 from a Mexican Spanish-Indian father and an African American mother. A St. Louisian, he was widely considered the finest pianist in the St. Louis area at the turn of the century. He was part of the ragtime community that met at Tom Turpin's Rosebud bar.
At the age of thirteen, he quit school and ran off with his friend Sam Patterson to join the Alabama Jubilee Singers. Chauvin had an excellent voice as well as keyboard talent.
Lewis appeared at the 1904 World's Fair with n his friend Sam Patterson.
Chauvin died in Chicago on March 26, 1908, aged 27 due to neurosyphilitic sclerosis. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, MO. He left only three published compositions and died without having recorded.
Thomas Clayton Wolfe: was on October 3, 1900 and was a major American novelist of the early 20th century. Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories and dramatic works. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. His books, written and published during the 1920s and 1930s, reflect vividly on American culture of the period. He became very famous during his own lifetime.[
Wolfe's work influences such famous novelists as- Jack Kerouac, authors Ray Bradbury and Philip Roth. He is considered to be North Carolina's most famous writer.
Wolfe's mother she opened a boarding house in St. Louis, for the World's Fair, and his parents took him to the Exposition when he was four.
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann: was born on February 20, 1844. He was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. He was one of the most important advocates for atomic theory. Boltzmann's most important scientific contributions were in kinetic theory, including the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for molecular speeds in a gas. Boltzmann's views played an essential role in the development of energetics, the scientific study of energy flows under transformation. Boltzmann died two years after visiting the 1904 World's Fair where he lectured in applied mathematics.
Frank and Orville Wright: There is no documentation to prove that the aircraft pioneers visited the Fair after it's opening ceremonies. Yet on 17 February, 1904, just two months after their `first manned flights' at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Brothers visited St. Louis to tour the Fair's aeronautical facilities being prepared for the Grand Prize course and facilities. The Wrights concluded that the Grand Prize requirements were impossibly demanding and did not enter their flyer in the competition.
The brothers' fundamental breakthrough was their invention of three-axis control, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and to maintain its equilibrium. This method became standard and remains standard on fixed-wing aircraft of all kinds. Wilbur died on May 30, 1912, while Orville passed on January 30, 1948.
Charles Marion Russell: was born on March 19, 1864, in St. Louis, Missouri; he was known as C. M. Russell, and one of the most famous American West artists ever. Russell created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western United States, in addition to bronze sculptures. Known as 'the cowboy artist', Russell was also a storyteller and author. The C. M. Russell Museum Complex located in Great Falls, Montana houses more than 2,000 Russell artworks, personal objects, and artifacts. Russell's mural entitled Lewis and Clark Meeting the Flathead Indians hangs in the state capitol building in Helena, Montana. Russell's 1918 painting Piegans sold for 5.6 million dollars at a 2005 auction. Russell visited the 1904 World's Fair and his favorite area was the Arrow Head Lake on the western extremity of the fairgrounds. Russell died on October 24, 1926.
Waite Phillips: was born on January 19, 1883, was an American oil pioneer and businessman, who created a fully integrated oil operation combining producing, refining and marketing. With headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he also developed several office complexes and engaged in banking as well as ranching. His brothers created the business which became known as Phillips Petroleum Company. He was also a major philanthropist, both for local Tulsa institutions as well as national causes. In Tulsa he had a 72-room mansion built as a residence, which he later donated to the city. It became the Philbrook Museum of Art. In other philanthropy, he donated 127,000 acres of his favorite ranch in New Mexico to the Boy Scouts of America, together with an office building as part of its endowment. After working a s a bookeeper in Knoxville, Phillips moved to St. Louis and took in the World's Fair before moving to Iowa. Phillips died on January 27, 1964.
Walter Burley Griffin: was born, November 24, 1876; he was a US architect and landscape architect, who is best known for his role in designing Canberra, Australia's capital city. He has also been credited with the development of the L-shaped floor plan, the carport and the first use of reinforced concrete. He began to work in Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Oak Park studio. Although he was never made a partner, Griffin oversaw the construction on many of Lloyd Wright's renowned homes including the Willits House in 1902 and the Larkin Administration Building built in 1904.Griffin visited the 1904 World's Fair on a number of occasions.
Charles Sumner and Henry Mather Greene: were brothers who established the architectural firm of Greene and Greene and were influential American architects, active primarily in California. Their bungalow houses and larger-scale ultimate bungalows are prime exemplars of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. They also gained a Japanese architectural influence when they visited the 1904 World's Fair. Their firm was officially dissolved in 1922 after Charles moved his family north. The brothers remained lifelong friends until their deaths in the 1950s.
Annie Mansfield Sullivan: was born Johanna Sullivan on April 14, 1866 in the Feeding Hills area of Agawam, Massachusetts. By the age of four Annie was legally blind from Trachoma, an eye disease which eventually leads to total blindness. Orphaned at the age of nine she was sent to the Almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts where her desire to be educated grew out of the enjoyment of being read to by the prostitutes there. On October 7, 1880, she entered the then Perkins Institution in South Boston. And though often on the verge of expulsion she graduated as class valedictorian in 1886. After several eye operations Annie's sight was partially restored. On March 3, 1887 she arrived in Tuscumbia, Alabama and began teaching was Helen Adams Keller. Annie accompanied Helen Keller to the 1904 World's Fair on Helen Keller Day.
