Editing Louisiana Purchase Exposition (section)

==Notable attendees==
[[File:Wrau-geronimo-1904-worlds-fair-cropped.jpg|thumb|right|[[Geronimo]], photographed by the fair's official photographer, [[William H. Rau]]]]

The Louisiana World's Fair was opened by President, [[Theodore Roosevelt]], by telegraph, but he did not attend personally until after his reelection in November 1904, as he stated he did not wish to use the fair for political purposes. Attendees included [[John Philip Sousa]], a musician, composer and conductor whose band performed on opening day and several times during the fair. [[Thomas Edison]] is claimed to have attended.

[[Ragtime]] music was popularly featured at the Fair. [[Scott Joplin]] wrote "The Cascades" specifically for the fair, inspired by the waterfalls at the Grand Basin, and presumably attended the fair.

[[Helen Keller]], who was 24 and graduated from [[Radcliffe College]], gave a lecture in the main auditorium.<ref>{{cite book |first=Conrad |last=Hilton |author-link=Conrad Hilton |year=1957 |title=Be My Guest |publisher=[[Prentice Hall Press]]}}</ref>

[[J. T. Stinson]], a well-regarded fruit specialist, introduced the phrase "[[An apple a day keeps the doctor away]]" (at a lecture during the exhibition).<ref>{{cite web |first=George W. |last=Baltzell |url=http://stlplaces.com/stl_foods/ |title=Foods of Saint Louis MO |website=Stlplaces.com |access-date=January 6, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140106173521/http://stlplaces.com/stl_foods/ |archive-date=January 6, 2014 }}</ref>

The French organist [[Alexandre Guilmant]] played a series of 40 recitals from memory on the great organ in Festival Hall, then the largest [[pipe organ]] in the world, including ''Toccata in D minor'' (Op. 108, No. 1) by [[Albert Renaud (organist)|Albert Renaud]], which Renaud had dedicated to Guilmant.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZjwlKtmSGEIC&dq=albert+renaud+toccata+guilmant&pg=PR5 ''Toccatas, Carillons and Scherzos for Organ: 27 Works for Church or Concert Performance''] ed. Rollin Smith (Dover Publications Inc., 2002), p. v. Retrieved January 7, 2022.</ref>

[[Geronimo]], the former [[Tribal chief|war chief]] of the [[Apache]], was "on display" in a teepee in the Ethnology Exhibit.

[[Grover Cleveland]], the 22nd and 24th president, attended the opening ceremony on April 30 and "overshadowed President Roosevelt in popular applause, when both stood on the same platform."<ref>{{cite book |first=Robert |last=McElroy |author-link=Robert McNutt McElroy |title=Grover Cleveland: The Man and the Statesman: An Authorized Biography |volume=II |location=[[New York City|New York]] and [[London]] |publisher=[[Harper & Brothers Publishers]] |year=1923 |pages=317–318 |url=https://archive.org/details/groverclevelandt007102mbp/page/n333/ |access-date=February 22, 2022 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

[[Henri Poincaré]] gave a keynote address on [[mathematical physics]], including an outline for what would eventually become known as [[special relativity]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/miller-01einstein.html |title=Einstein, Picasso – Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc By ARTHUR I. MILLER |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090417013823/http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/miller-01einstein.html |archive-date=April 17, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=A Course in Mathematics for Students of Physics: 1 |last1=Bamberg |first1=Paul |last2=Sternberg |first2=Shlomo |author-link2=Shlomo Sternberg |year=1998 |orig-year=First published in 1988 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=[[Cambridge, UK]] |page=160 |isbn=9780521406499}}</ref>

[[Jelly Roll Morton]] did not visit, stating in his later [[Library of Congress]] interview and recordings that he expected jazz pianist [[Tony Jackson (jazz musician)|Tony Jackson]] would attend and win a jazz piano competition at the Exposition. Morton said he was "quite disgusted" to later learn that Jackson had not attended either, and that the competition had been won instead by Alfred Wilson; Morton considered himself a better pianist than Wilson.

The poet [[T. S. Eliot]], who was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, visited the Igorot Village held in the Philippine Exposition section of the St. Louis World's Fair. Several months after the closing of the World's Fair, he published a short story entitled "The Man Who Was King" in the school magazine of Smith Academy, St. Louis, Missouri, where he was a student. Inspired by the ganza dance that the Igorot people presented regularly in the Village and their reaction to "civilization", the poet explored the interaction of a white man with the island culture. All this predates the poet's delving into the anthropological studies during his Harvard graduate years.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Narita |first=Tatsushi |title=Fiction and Fact in T. S. Eliot's 'The Man Who Was King' |journal=[[Notes and Queries]] |volume=237 |issue=2 |pages=191–192}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Narita |first=Tatsushi |title=T. S. Eliot and His Youth as 'A Literary Columbus' |location=[[Nagoya]] |publisher=Kougaku Shuppan |year=2011 |pages=15–20, 29–33}}</ref>

[[Max Weber]] visited upon first coming to the United States in hopes of using some of his findings for a case study on capitalism.<ref>{{cite book |first=Ludwig M. |last=Lachmann |author-link=Ludwig Lachmann |year=1970 |title=The Legacy of Max Weber |publisher=[[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] |page=143 |isbn=978-1-61016-072-8 }}</ref>

[[Jack Daniel]], the American distiller and the founder of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distillery, entered his Tennessee whiskey into the World's Fair whiskey competition. After four hours of deliberation, the eight judges awarded [[Jack Daniel's|Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey]] the Gold Medal for the finest whiskey in the world. The award was a boon for the Jack Daniel's distillery.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www2.jackdaniels.com/TennesseeWhiskey/TheBottle.aspx |title=The Bottle |access-date=February 6, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140214084236/http://www2.jackdaniels.com/TennesseeWhiskey/TheBottle.aspx |archive-date=February 14, 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.jackdaniels.com/en-us/whiskey/limited/1904-gold-medal-series |title=1904 Gold Medal Series |website=[[Jack Daniel's]] |date=April 23, 2016 |access-date=October 25, 2020}}</ref>

Novelist [[Kate Chopin]] lived nearby and purchased a season ticket to the fair. After her visit on the hot day of August 20, she suffered a [[brain hemorrhage]] and died two days later, on August 22, 1904.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.katechopin.org/biography.shtml |title=Biography, Kate Chopin, The Awakening, The Storm, stories |website=katechopin.org |access-date=April 29, 2018 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131221143631/http://www.katechopin.org/biography.shtml |archive-date=December 21, 2013}}</ref>

Philadelphia mercantilist, [[John Wanamaker]], visited the exposition in November 1904 and purchased an entire collection of German furniture which included the giant ''jugendstil'' brass sculpture of an eagle that he would display in the rotunda of his Wanamaker's department store in Philadelphia. In 1909 Wanamaker also purchased the organ from the fair, which at the time was the biggest pipe organ in the world. It is still featured today, much enlarged, as the [[Wanamaker Organ]] in the Grand Court of his Philadelphia retail palace. Wanamaker purchased and donated an ancient Egyptian tomb, a mummy and other relics to the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania.

Benedictine monk, artist and museum founder, Fr. [[Gregory Gerrer]], OSB, exhibited his recent portrait of [[Pope Pius X]] at the fair. Following the fair, Gerrer brought the painting to [[Shawnee, Oklahoma]], where it is now on display at the [[Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Ast|first=Nicholas|title=Gregory Gerrer|url=http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=GE011|publisher=[[Oklahoma Historical Society]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150622020731/http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=GE011|archive-date=June 22, 2015|access-date=June 21, 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[John McCormack (tenor)|John McCormack]], Irish [[tenor]], was brought to the fair by James A. Reardon, who was in charge of the Irish exhibit.<ref>{{cite news|author=Chicago Tribune|date=August 19, 2021|title=Tenor of All Time|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1995/03/12/tenor-of-all-time/|work=Chicago Tribune|location=Chicago, IL|access-date=October 8, 2024}}</ref>

The [[Sundance Kid]] visited the exposition, accompanied by [[Etta Place]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Haile|first=Bartee|year=2017|title=Unforgettable Texans|publisher=[[The History Press]]|isbn=978-1467137737}}</ref>