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.
32-405: 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
64-694: 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
96-467: 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) The Motordrome , also known as the Olympic Park Speedway ,
128-579: A large site known as the Amateur Sports Ground from the Crown with the help of local entrepreneur John Wren . On the site, the Motordrome was constructed. The stadium contained a grassed oval suitable for football, set inside a saucer-shaped concrete oval track suitable for motor racing; the track was a third of a mile long and banked at a 46° angle. Although Melbourne Carnivals originally had visions for
160-831: 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
192-622: 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
224-608: The Empire Stadium in London (Cordy Milne would finish third). Australia won the first test 31–23 on 19 December 1936, and won the third test 30–24 on 23 January 1937 (the second test, won 29-24 by Australia, was held at the Sydney Showground on 28 December). Although not much top-level football was played on the Motordrome, its presence as a high capacity centrally-located ground had a significant off-field impact on football during
256-782: 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
288-666: The Melbourne Speedway or the Victorian Speedway , was a former speedway and Australian rules football ground located approximately on the site of the present day Melbourne Rectangular Stadium in Olympic Park in Melbourne , Victoria . The ground was primarily a speedway track, but also hosted football matches. Melbourne Carnivals Pty. Ltd, a company established in 1923 by Jack Campbell and Jim DuFrocq, developed and leased
320-895: 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
352-541: The 1920s and 1930s. When the venue was first established in 1924, the Victorian Football League was very keen for strategic reasons to control it. Melbourne Carnivals had offered to lease the ground to the new Public Service Football Club if it were admitted to the League in 1925. This offer became the trigger for off-field negotiations which ultimately saw Footscray , Hawthorn and North Melbourne admitted to
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#1732858426421384-614: The 1931 season, the VFL and the Grounds Management Association (which represented the operators of most of the VFL grounds) entered a dispute over the use of the grounds for football matches, covering financial arrangements and the demarcation between the football and cricket seasons. During the dispute, the VFL arranged for the Motordrome, as well as the Exhibition Oval , to host twelve games which were to be transferred away from
416-609: 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
448-478: The VFL , but saw the VFL fail to secure the use of the Motordrome. There had been proposals for the Richmond Football Club to move to the venue, or for it to be used as a neutral venue to which each club moved one or two of its home matches each year; however, these proposals fell through. The Victorian Football Association went on to play its finals matches at the venue in 1925, 1926 and 1927. Prior to
480-826: 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
512-681: The class and type of sport which was now played on the grounds. The complex was sold after the Second World War and began to be converted into the Olympic Park Stadium used during the 1956 Olympics . During the time of the Great Depression the ground regularly drew in crowds of more than 30,000 to watch speedway, motorcycle and sidecar racing. It is generally acknowledged that the first Speedcar race in Australia took place at
544-575: 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
576-632: 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
608-543: The end of 1935 between VFA Grand Finalists Yarraville and Camberwell , and at the end of 1936 between combined teams representing the VFL and VFA. School and junior football was regularly played on the venue. On 11 December 1926, the venue hosted a shambolic ostrich racing event. A full program of races was scheduled, but the event was cancelled after three farcical attempts at races – in which startled ostriches ridden by inanimate jockeys ran in opposite directions, and ostriches attached to sulkies failed to break out of
640-483: 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
672-430: 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
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#1732858426421704-459: The ground each year, as well as playing the finals there. This caused a massive dispute with the local councils which owned the VFA's suburban grounds, and it culminated in seven of the VFA's twelve clubs being kicked out of their local grounds until the agreement was rescinded, almost ruining the 1934 VFA season and potentially forcing those clubs to disband or secede en masse from the VFA. The agreement
736-477: The grounds involved in the dispute, but the dispute was ultimately resolved through arbitration in March and the games were transferred back to their original grounds. Then in 1932, the VFA signed a deal to use the Motordrome as a neutral central venue from 1933 until 1940. Under the agreement, the VFA would play one match at the ground each weekend during the season, with each club moving one or two of its home games to
768-457: 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
800-540: 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
832-535: The same year, the Amateur Sports Ground was renamed Olympic Park , and the name was generally used for both the former Motordrome stadium, and the wider park in which it was situated. The name change had no connection to the Olympic Games – Melbourne was not selected as the host of the 1956 Summer Olympics until 1949 – and rather was chosen because the former name 'Amateur Sports Ground' no longer reflected
864-527: 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
896-461: The speedway in 1934. In 1936/37, the speedway also saw two Motorcycle speedway test matches between the Australians , including future ( 1938 ) Speedway World Champion Bluey Wilkinson , taking on the visiting Americans who included the 1937 World Champion Jack Milne and his younger brother Cordy , as well as Wilbur Lamoreaux who would finish second behind Milne in the 1937 World Final at
928-446: The stadium to accommodate 100,000 spectators, it was ultimately built to accommodate around 32,000. The Motordrome was opened on 29 November 1924, and 32,000 spectators attended the inaugural race meeting. In 1933, the ageing concrete surface of the motor racing track was no longer suitable for the higher powered vehicles which used it, so it was demolished and replaced with a dirt track which continued to be used for motor racing. In
960-542: The venue occurred during the early part of 1932 , when Melbourne played three home matches there because the Melbourne Cricket Ground was being resurfaced. In the 1935 pre-season, the venue staged a night match under electric floodlights between 1934 VFL Grand Finalists Richmond and South Melbourne . The players had some visibility problems, mostly with depth perception, but the match attracted 25,000 spectators. Further exhibition night matches were played at
992-562: 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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1024-582: Was rescinded shortly before the season began. The Richmond Football Club formally announced its intentions to move its home base from the Punt Road Oval to Olympic Park prior to the 1936 season, owing mostly to an ongoing dispute with the Richmond Cricket Club . Richmond's proposal to move was ultimately voted down by the VFL, but only by the casting vote of League president William McClelland . The only VFL premiership football ever played at
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