Million dollar babies

If you've never traveled to the Emerald City - a name chosen in a r 982 contest to replace our earlier nickname, the Queen City* - you've seen the Needle in a billion episodes of Frasier and Grey's Anatomy, and if you're an Elvis fan - and you are - you've seen The King singing and dancing in the 1963 hit It Happened At The World's Fair. At the time of the t 96 2 World's Fair, I lived in Corvallis, Ore., and didn't see it. When Vancouver, B.C., held its fair in r 986, I was living in Seattle and didn't see it. I imagine when the World's Fair is held on Russia's Big Diomede Island, I'll be living in Wasilla, Alaska, where I will, no doubt, be able to see it from my house. Oliva and Elzire Dionne's brood was delivered on May 28, T934, by Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe and two midwives in Callander, Ont. When the local newspaper's editors got wind of it and put the story on the wires, the Quints became worldwide sensations immedi- ately after taking their first breath. Within minutes, the curious and the querulous came calling. Within hours, promoters, shutterbugs and looky-loos were encamped in the sleepy hamlet. Within a week, a sharp promoter from the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition - the Space Needle-less Chicago World's Fair - arrived with money, a contract and a pen. The "Man from Chicago" was Ivan I. Spear, who had the rather charming carny notion of putting the baby girls on display in the Land of Lincoln.