1743. we even represent the presence of islam in america, very difficult to document through material culture. the very small charm, a little copper charm with an inscription from the koran that was excavated in pennsylvania from an archaeological site getting to the mid-18th century, perhaps owned by enslaved african who was muslim. it is tremendous to be able to have this tradition represented through an object in the exam. when you get -- in the museum. point, yout to this come to the statue of king george the third we bring you back to when the moment was started, when the declaration was being read in new york in 1776. we have a sailor off their offering you a rope that he's throwing down to try to invite you to consider, but where would

you have stood at this point in the story? you have heard that the loyalist critique is, you have heard people try to remain neutral, from fervent revolutionaries. we want you to feel like that maybe you had a choice and the outcome was still quite uncertain. we have on display these large lumps here in the case on loan to us from the new york historical society, fragments of the original statute that stood there at the bowling green. it was composed of guilt lets, about 4000 pounds of lead in large sheets. that was broken apart into sheets and melted down into 42,000 musket balls, which were turned into ammunition for the continental army. his musket balls were referred to as melted majesty. it was issued out to the continental army and fired back at the ministerial troops, as they call them. there are only a few that

actually survived, but it's a great story. >> monday on the communicators, the technology fair on capitol hill, members of congress looking at the latest on drone technology and new security features for mobile phones. >> when wanted to see innovation u.s.,ing in the life-changing innovation, whether it health care, car navigation, health and safety, so many other things. they understand the decisions you make have real life consequences. >> watch the communicators monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. all weekend, american history tv, featuring spokane, washington. c-span cities tour's staff visited many sites showcasing its history.

located in the eastern part of the state, about 280 miles from seattle, the city is home to .bout 200,000 people learn more about spokane all weekend here on american history tv. bill: explosive 74 took place, believe it or not, in 1974. spokane was, at the time, the smallest city in the world to ever host a world's fair. but it was the first environmental world's fair, first to use the environment as a thing. it followed close on nicely 72, the very first birthday. 1972, the very first earth day. the accessionably of expo 74, to try and create a

world fair and a series of behaviors to inspire other consciousness of the environment. right now, we are in the archives section of the northwest museum of arts and culture in spokane. quite a few of the records from expo 74 are here. what we are looking at right now of whaty large map, one was called birdseye maps, ironically before people went up in airplanes. they had these maps that put you in your imagination of the the city and they were very carefully worked out to show the buildings. what you can see here is the , onane river flowing from my right would be the east, idaho, flowing into spokane. this is 1890. you can see mills along the

across number of bridges it. no railroad trestles, the railroads would come later. right across this part of the river. this is basically the region where this whole story takes place. so bear in mind, that in 1960 say, this is what spokane looks like. the river is essentially forgotten. very ugly, urban, cluttered cap. at one point, the clutter was progress. we have trains coming in, hooray , we have mills and they are making us a lot of money. but a variety of things happened that made that change. one of them was the inspector of the shopping center. a big shopping center went up north of spokane and it's still there today, north town. with that, a lot of commerce moved a lot of -- moved out of

downtown spokane to the outside. 1930u look at spokane in or 40, photographs of the street looks like midtown manhattan. the streets were crowded. but by 1960, most of that trade had moved to the shopping center. the streets were almost deserted , commerce was failing. that was really what started people thinking about urban renewal, about somehow making the downtown more attractive. there was a series of meetings of various kinds, people together a variety of ideas. but it didn't get much past ideas. yes, they wanted to renew downtown. a few people said, that river is pretty, maybe we can make something out of that that people would want to come down and see it. but one of the problems was, though there was a lot of hacking for this, there was nobody really to work on it day

by day. latet that point, in the 1960's, spokane did a nationwide search and hired, from california, a man named leave it or not, king cole. . naturally all the newspapers picked up the cliche and said he was a very old soul and get that out of the way. king cole was the real deal. he liked to say spoke and needed withrior, not a warrior ier.sword, but a worr 18 hours a day. cole did that. he gathered people together, got people ideas, looked at various possibilities. he and others came up with the idea of the world fair, which in a town the size of spokane,

180,000 people, that was very pretentious because world fares were typically new york or even seattle would have been considered a small city to have had a world fair. it had one in 1962. he and spokane and ultimately olympia, washington, the capital, worked on it and worked on it a lot. king cole made a number of trips to paris where the center for world fares exists and began exploring with them the idea of this little city in the west having this world fair. one of the attractions to the fair was the fact of the falls, bringing people to the place where they had the falls in the fair. you go to ford or general motors and you want them to exhibit expo 74. there is a town not that well known. we call it spokane, rhymes with can. say s time, most people

po-kane, but it's spokane. the river falls would be spectacular. like any western river fed by mountains and a snowmelt from mountains, the spokane river is most spectacular in the spring when the water is running. at one point, they had industrialists from detroit, ford and general motors, and representatives higher up of those companies. they wanted to persuade them that this would be a good place for a world's fair. the trouble was, it was august or september and the water had gone down to just a trickle going to the falls. there are several up river dams and naturally, the power company was interested in seeing this fair happen and they arranged to cut off the flow of the river

of time for a period while king cole and others in spokane had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the side of the falls. only the carefully set them down to where they would not be looking at the river. then at a predetermined time, say 1:00, king cole said, have you seen our river? they would say, no, no, no. he would say, let's go look. it would walk over to the windows and there are the falls crashing through the center of the city. the people were very impressed by it. they went back to their hotel, 20 minutes later, the power company shut off the river so to speak, turned off the faucet. but they made their case very well. in addition to getting corporations to exhibit and kodak, for example, would be

another one that came of it there was the more important question of support by the state, the nation, and other countries around the world. washington state naturally was enthusiastic it would be in aeir state and they built pavilion which became basically a concert hall opera house that is still standing beside the river. and along the way, we were lining up other countries around the world, japan for example australia,did germany, a variety of other countries. iran. spokane,lincher for was that for the first time since before world war ii, the soviet union exhibited at an american world's fair. not only did they come to spokane, but they came in force. a huge pavilion, three theaters within the pavilion.

the irony of that is, spokane was and is somewhat more conservative, say than other parts of the country and affection for communism in the soviet union was not necessarily second nature to folks in spokane. but on the one hand, they might be anti-soviet, but on the other hand, they were very pro-soviet and very grateful that so much had been done for our worlds fair. the opening of the fair came in early may of 1974. and about 80,000 people came to that and richard nixon, president and said, gave the opening speech. -- president nixon, gave the opening speech. >> it is a pleasure to be here on this sparkling opening day to speak about what this particular occasion means, not only for

now, and the days ahead in the summer where i hope hundreds of thousands and maybe millions will come to see it. but down on the pages of history perhaps to the year 2000, 25 years from now, when we celebrate a new year's that comes once in a thousand years. back to seelook what we did now to make that a theyear that was not only greatest new year for america, but for every nation in the world. today we speak of the environment in terms as we should of cleaning up the air and the water, of a legacy of parks, of all of those other things that have to do with making our cities and our towns and our countryside more beautiful.

for our children and those that follow us. another aspect of environment that occurs to each of us, of course, is what this magnificent expo is going to leave as a legacy. these beautiful buildings, it will leave 100 figure parks in the heart of the city of spokane, which was once a blighted area. monuments be physical to what you, the citizens of spokane and the state of washington have done in putting on expo 74. this was a very awkward time for president next in. the watergate scandal had been going on for more than a year at this point and fairly recently,

the tapes had been discovered that really ended up putting the nail in his coffin in terms of ending his presidency. and the was opening day fair then went on as fares did then. thatnk it is still a rule a fair runs for six months normally. during that time, about 5 million people came to see the world's fair, which is not a large number in terms of say, something like the huge shanghai world's fair of 2010, where i believe 80 million people came. but if you take the population of 20 million and the publishing of spokane at 200,000, a much higher proportion of people came to the spokane fair, both from spokane and other parts of the world. so a small fair, but in its way, to medicine successful. -- tremendously successful. all of