50 years ago in Expo history: Shouting, french onion soup and ‘frantically’ ringing phones – the great fair power outage was upon us

The previous day’s power outage at Expo ’74 was a bigger problem than earlier reports had indicated.

At one point, power was out for three-quarters of the site, and in some places the outage lasted almost all day.

At the Expo headquarters, “phones rang frantically” as people called in complaints and updates. Expo president King Cole had to shout when he formally greeted a group of fairgoers from Montana, because the microphones were without power.

Visitors were turned away from the IMAX theater and the Japanese Pavilion. At Pierre’s French restaurant, all lunch patrons ate only French onion soup, because that was the only menu item that had been prepared in advance.

“Everybody ate by candles,” the proprietor said.

The chairlift and gondola were shut down, but fortunately nobody was stranded on the rides. The operators had advance notice that their power was being re-routed temporarily, so they were able to clear all of the passengers.

The cause of the outage was still under investigation, but it was probably due to a damaged underground cable.

In other Expo news, the U.S. Pavilion was selling a surprising popular item: The transcripts of the Watergate hearings.

The pavilion received 16 copies from the U.S. Government Printing Office and sold them out immediately. They received 96 more copies and had already sold more than half of them.