A Boomer's History of the 1964 World's Fair

                              The 1964 New York World's Fair, which opened in April, was a sprawling showcase of midcentury American culture and technology.  Although nearly 52 million people attended the fair, it was a huge financial flop, returning only 19 cents on the dollar to investors.  Some World's Fair trivia:

• The star attraction of the Vatican Pavillion was Michelangelo's Pieta.
• Most popular exhibit: GM's Futurama, which mesmerized nearly 26 million vistors with 3-D scenes of the "World of Tomorrow."
• Top-grossing commercial pavillion: reportedly "Bourbon Street," with go-go dancer Candy Johnson headlining at the Gay New Orleans Nightclub.
• In their fifth season on TV in 1965, the Flintstones visited the fair using a time machine.
• Little-known exhibit: a scale model of the World Trade Center planned for lower Manhattan.
• Walt Disney's "audio-animatronic" Abraham Lincoln had more than 250,000 combinations of facial expressions, gestures and other actions.
• The fair's Unisphere icon, a 12-story, stainless-steel model of the Earth, was "destroyed" in the 1997 film Men in Black.