I made an amazing find today while browsing through my local antique mall; a 33 1/3-rpm red souvenir vinyl record in an illustrated sleeve from the Travelers Insurance pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair!

This pavilion contained an exhibit called The Triumph of Man, comprised of 13 dioramas illustrating the history of the human race from caveman to astronaut, and each diorama had a voiceover recorded by well-known narrator, Peter Thomas [Link]

After listening to the record and looking at the wonderful sleeve illustrations, I felt compelled to transfer it to a virtual format in an attempt to recreate at least a little of what it must've been like to stand in front of each diorama while listening to our humble narrator's ponderous retelling of The Black Death and Man's Leap to the Stars. After a few hours of scanning and wysiwyg-ing, I had my very own Triumph of Man virtual pavilion, which I now gladly share with you.

If you have a fast connection and a browser that supports embedded audio, click on the following link which will take you to a gallery of 13 diorama images from the record sleeve. Click on each image to view it in a larger popup window, then play the MP3 segment below to hear the uplifting saga that accompanies it. [Link]

If you're on a dial-up and don't wish to wait for all those MP3 clips to load, simply follow this link to the no-audio version. [Link]