Who started science fairs might surprise you

The origins of the science fairs in the United States began almost thirty years before the first National Science Fair in Philadelphia in 1950. Its beginnings can be traced back to newspaper mogul E.W. Scripps in 1921. He fathered the Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, in collaboration with The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Council. Scripps created the Science Service as a nonprofit organization to popularize science by explaining technical scientific findings in a jargon-free manner to the American public. Under the watchful editorial eyes of Edwin Slosson and Watson Davis, the original weekly mimeographed Science News Bulletin evolved by the end of 1920s into the Scientific News Letter, a weekly magazine.