S23E5 - Why 6 Million People Rushed to See This in 1851 (The Great Exhibition) | Boring History For Sleep

Tonight, you’ll discover what drew roughly six million visits to one extraordinary event in 1851, what people found waiting inside London’s enormous Crystal Palace, and why the Great Exhibition became one of the defining spectacles of the Victorian age.

We’ll step through the glass doors and explore a vast collection of machinery, inventions, textiles, artwork, luxury goods, and curiosities gathered from Britain and around the world. For many visitors, simply walking beneath the Crystal Palace’s enormous glass-and-iron structure was part of the attraction.

But this was about much more than displaying interesting objects...