A man was admitted to Expo 2025 in Japan with a ticket to a 1940 event that was called off as war escalated, organizers said.
Tickets for the “Grand International Exposition of Japan” in Tokyo were released in 1938, but the event was postponed indefinitely as Japan became embroiled in World War II.
Organizers of Expo 2025 in the western city of Osaka, which opened last month and runs until mid-October, said in a statement they had decided to admit holders of tickets to the 1940 event.
Photo: EPA-EFE
They exchanged one of the old tickets on Monday for two one-day Expo 2025 passes, the statement said.
Local media reported that the 1940 ticket-holder was 25-year-old Fumiya Takenawa, who lives in Tokyo, but was visiting his parents’ home in Osaka.
Takenawa is a collector of expo-related memorabilia and in March he purchased the 1940 ticket online, the Mainichi Shimbun daily and other outlets reported.
They published a photograph of him smiling and holding up the old ticket, which features an elaborate red and black design.
The Expo, or World’s Fair, which brought the Eiffel Tower to Paris, began with London’s 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition and is now held every five years in different locations.
Previous Expos in Japan — in Osaka in 1970 and in Aichi Prefecture in 2005 — have had similar policies of giving “invitation tickets” to people holding passes for the 1940 event, the Expo 2025 organizers said.
Takenawa was reportedly a fan of the huge white and red “Tower of the Sun,” the symbol of the 1970 Osaka Expo that still stands in a park in the metropolis.
REVENGE: Trump said he had the support of the Syrian government for the strikes, which took place in response to an Islamic State attack on US soldiers last week The US launched large-scale airstrikes on more than 70 targets across Syria, the Pentagon said on Friday, fulfilling US President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back after the killing of two US soldiers. “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media. “Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.” The US Central Command said that fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapon sites. “All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned
The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week. State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive. “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform. China’s
‘POLITICAL LOYALTY’: The move breaks with decades of precedent among US administrations, which have tended to leave career ambassadors in their posts US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered dozens of US ambassadors to step down, people familiar with the matter said, a precedent-breaking recall that would leave embassies abroad without US Senate-confirmed leadership. The envoys, career diplomats who were almost all named to their jobs under former US president Joe Biden, were told over the phone in the past few days they needed to depart in the next few weeks, the people said. They would not be fired, but finding new roles would be a challenge given that many are far along in their careers and opportunities for senior diplomats can
Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early yesterday, local authorities said. The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told reporters. Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said. Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day. The accident site
RSS