"Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations" -- the first
of the great World's Fairs of the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition

The Crystal Palace, the vast central building of the Exhibition, had a
complex after-life. It was rebuilt (rather differently) in a different
location, and survived as a kind of Events Centre until destroyed by
fire in 1936.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace

Meanwhile, Crystal (no relation) is most interested in the _Official
Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue_ of the Exhibition, a massive
1400-page inventory of the modern world's productions. "Dozens of new
formations are listed....The Catalogue sometimes provides the first
recorded use of an item..." (a reference to OED). His first-use examples
are:
sulphurator "An apparatus for sprinkling plants with flowers of sulfur,
fumigating with sulfur, or the like."
Tahiti cane "The sugar cane, Saccharum officinarum."

More interestingly, one of the new industrial wonders of the Exhibition
was--- pay toilets! Designed by George Jennings, and apparently referred
to colloquially as "monkey closets", they cost one penny to use. Whence
the expression "spend a penny", which survived longer than the Crystal
Palace.

Oh yes, it was also May Day, with all that that entails. Since Tennyson
is in the air (at least on a.u.e.) let's recall:

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow ’ll be the happiest time of all the glad new-year,—
Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;
For I ’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I ’m to be Queen o’ the May.

Ar an dara lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Ross Clark:

> [...] More interestingly, one of the new industrial wonders of the
> Exhibition was--- pay toilets! Designed by George Jennings, and apparently
> referred to colloquially as "monkey closets", they cost one penny to use.
> Whence the expression "spend a penny", which survived longer than the
> Crystal Palace.

On its last legs now, I would say, but I don’t watch much British TV lately.

I wonder if there an online resource for dying English phrases. I remember the
Duden Oxford German-English dictionary translated „futsch sein“ as ‘to be gone
for a Burton’ and when the phrase came up in a German conversation exchange
locally I realised the latter phrase has no currency locally.

--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)