Coat hangers were not invented until 1900, but flush loos were seen at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

ECONOMIST: 19th-century domesticity

Hilltop Crystal Palace Park was created to display Joseph Paxton's behemoth glass-and-iron structure, relocated from Hyde Park after the Great Exhibition of 1851.

BBC: Common people: London's green spaces

Long gone are the days of the Great Exhibition in London of 1851, the progenitor of all expos, when the point was to show off manufactured goods (and British industrial strength).

ECONOMIST: The Shanghai World Expo

When Gamble exhibited an array of canned foods at the Great Exhibition in 1851, to widespread approval, it must have seemed like the tin can's switch from military necessity to household must-have was only a matter of time.

BBC: The story of how the tin can nearly wasn't