In 1871, Potter Palmer, a Chicago businessman, built Palmer House, a Hilton Hotel, for a wedding gift for his wife, Bertha, who in 1893 asked the hotel’s pastry chef to make a chocolate cake-like treat that would be easy to transport for the World’s Columbian Exposition. The result of this request was the Palmer House Brownie, made of thick chocolate and topped with a walnut and apricot glaze and later published in a Sears Roebuck Catalog in 1898.
100 Mind-Blowing Exposition Facts
The Eiffel Tower was originally intended for Barcelona. The Spanish city thought the design was too ugly, so Gustave Eiffel pitched it to Paris instead, as a temporary landmark during its 1889 International Exposition. French critics didn’t like it much either though.