The Danbury Fair (also known as The Great Danbury State Fair ) was a yearly exhibition in Danbury, Connecticut . It was begun in 1821 as an agricultural fair, but did not have a regular schedule until 1869 when hat manufacturers Rundle and White helped form the Danbury Farmers and Manufacturers Society. From then until its closing, the fair was open for ten days every October.
17-405: The fair took up 142 acres (0.57 km²) of what Rundle and White had hoped would be a Danbury Pleasure Park. Admission was 25 cents for adults and 15 cents for children. The fair offered everything from tobacco, pears, and home-brewed wines to hats, boots, saddles, carriages, wagons, churns, and stoves. In 1895, more than 1000 people were employed by the fair. In 1932, a race track was built on
34-716: A "World Speedcar Championship" or "World Speedcar Derby". During this time Speedcars were arguably the most popular category in Australian speedway with crowds of up to 30,000 attending meetings at the Sydney Showground and over 10,000 in Adelaide and Brisbane. Speedcars continue to race across Australia, with the major events being the annual Australian Speedcar Championship , state championships (held in QLD, NSW, VIC, TAS, SA, WA, and ACT), and blue ribbon events including
51-526: A famous Formula Libre race, where Rodger Ward shocked the expensive and exotic sports cars by beating them on the road course in an Offenhauser powered midget car , usually used on oval tracks. Ward used an advantageous power-to-weight ratio and dirt-track cornering abilities to steal the win. Motordrome (Melbourne) Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include
68-880: The Australian Speedcar Grand Prix (first held in 1938), the $ 20k to win Australasian 50 Lap Speedcar Championship (first held in 1946)(SA), the Sydney 50 Lapper (NSW), Ultimate Speedcar Championship (QLD), the John Day Speedcar Classic (WA), the Beasley Family Memorial (VIC) and more. In December 2013, POWRi Midget Racing began a 16-event Lucas Oil POWRi Midget World Championship that ran until June 2014. Drivers competed in New Zealand and Australia at
85-640: The Chili Bowl held in early January at the Tulsa Expo Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma . There are midget races in dirt track racing and in asphalt (paved tracks). There are three-quarter (TQ) midgets which developed from "midget midget" cars of the late 1940s. Quarter midgets are one-quarter the size of a full midget car. The first organized Midget car race happened on June 4, 1933. The sports' first regular weekly program began on August 10, 1933 at
102-815: The Magic Forest amusement park in Lake George, New York . ( Photo of Uncle Sam at Magic Forest in Lake George, New York ). The sculpture of Uncle Sam is 38 feet tall and is claimed to be the tallest Uncle Sam in the world. The Uncle Sam statue returned to its home in Danbury in 2019 and is located at the Danbury Railway Museum . The sculpture of Paul Bunyan was manufactured by International Fiberglass , which mass-produced identical sculptures to sell to stores such as tire or muffler shops (thus
119-909: The United States in the 1930s and are raced on most continents. There is a worldwide tour and national midget tours in the United States, Australia, Argentina and New Zealand . Typically, these four-cylinder-engine cars have 300 horsepower (220 kW) to 400 horsepower (300 kW) and weigh 900 pounds (410 kg). The high power and small size of the cars combine to make midget racing quite dangerous; for this reason, modern midget cars are fully equipped with roll cages and other safety features. Some early major midget car manufacturers include Kurtis Kraft (1930s to 1950s) and Solar (1944–46). Midgets are intended to be driven for races of relatively short distances, usually 2.5 to 25 miles (4 to 40 km). Some events are staged inside arenas, like
136-638: The Loyola High School Stadium in Los Angeles under the control of the first official governing body, the Midget Auto Racing Association (MARA). After spreading across the country, the sport traveled around the world; first to Australia in 1934 at Melbourne's Olympic Park on December 15, and to New Zealand in 1937. Early midget races were held on board tracks previously used for bicycle racing . When
153-831: The beginning of the 2013–14 season and ended in the United States. Midget car racing also grew in popularity in the Northeast of the United States, in part due to racers like Bill Schindler and events at tracks like that at Hinchcliffe Stadium . Many IndyCar and NASCAR drivers use midget car racing as an intermediate stepping stone on their way to more high-profile divisions, including Tony Stewart , Sarah Fisher , Rodger Ward , A. J. Foyt , Mario Andretti , Johnnie Parsons , Ryan Newman , Kyle Larson , Jeff Gordon , Christopher Bell , Bill Vukovich , and others. Events are sometimes held on weeknights so that popular and famous drivers from other, higher-profiled types of motor racing (who race in those higher-profiled types of racing on
170-655: The country's "golden era" of the 1950s and 1960s. Australian promoters such as Adelaide 's Kym Bonython who ran the Rowley Park Speedway , and Empire Speedways who ran the Brisbane Exhibition Ground and the famous Sydney Showground Speedway , often imported drivers from the US, such as the popular Jimmy Davies . Promoters in Australia during this period often staged races billed as either
187-706: The country, facing opposition from independent drivers and racetracks. After the AAA withdrew from sanctioning races in 1955, the United States Auto Club took over as the major sanctioning body of midget car racing in the United States. NASCAR had a midget division from 1952 to 1968. Soon after in Australia , Speedcar racing became popular with the first Australian Speedcar Championship being contested in Melbourne in 1935, its popularity running through
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#1732783441961204-483: The fair's owner John Leahy died in 1975, the organization fell into disarray. The escalating value of the land led to the assessment of high estate taxes that compelled the organization to sell it. Meanwhile, due to its prime location, outside entities increasingly expressed interest in purchasing the land, and the amounts they offered to buy it regularly increased. The last day of the fair was October 12, 1981, with an estimated 400,000 people having attended that year. All of
221-430: The fairgrounds for the midget car and stock car races that had replaced the earlier harness races. During the 1950s through 1970s, the fair's multivaried attractions included New England Village, Dutch Village, lumberjack competitions, oxen draws, sheep shearing contests, music and dancing, puppet shows, animal petting zoos, rides and games, displays of farm machinery, and food and livestock exhibits and judging. When
238-463: The purpose-built speedway at Gilmore Stadium was completed, racing ended at the school stadium, and hundreds of tracks began to spring up across the United States. Angell Park Speedway in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin (near Madison ) is another major track in the United States operating since the first half of the twentieth century. The AAA Contest Board soon started sanctioning midget races across
255-549: The rides, attractions, and holdings were auctioned off. The Danbury Fair Mall was built on the fairgrounds by the Wilmorite Corporation. Photos of the fair and original signs used to be found in the mall's food court. The fair featured large fiberglass sculptures of characters such as Uncle Sam and Paul Bunyan . Many of these were purchased after the fair was closed, and continue to exist. Notably, Jack Gillette purchased hundreds of objects to put on display at
272-531: The sculptures are generally referred to as Muffler Men ). The Danbury Fair Paul Bunyan was eventually painted like a " hippy " and moved to Max Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, New York (home of annual Woodstock reunions). It has since returned to Danbury. Midget car Midget cars , also Speedcars in Australia , is a class of racing cars. The cars are very small with a very high power-to-weight ratio and typically use four cylinder engines . They originated in
289-567: The weekends) will be available to compete, and so that it does not conflict with drivers' home tracks. Australia 's Triple Formula One World Drivers' Champion Sir Jack Brabham got his motor racing start in Speedcars on the dirt track ovals in his home town of Sydney . Before going on to become the 1959 , 1960 and 1966 World Champion, Brabham was a multiple Australian national and state title winner from 1948 until he turned full time to road racing in 1953. In 1959, Lime Rock Park held
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