According to Nancy McMichael, a snow globe collector profiled in a 1997 article in The New York Times, the first snow globes were showcased at the 1878 Paris Universal Exposition by a local glassware firm. She isn’t the only one who noticed. As described in the (exhaustive) reports of the U.S. Commissioners to the exposition, the water-filled globes each featured a little man holding an umbrella, and “a white powder which, when the paper weight is turned upside down, falls in an imitation of a snow storm.” The next iteration of the snow globe came in 1889, again at the Paris Universal Exposition. As McMichael writes in her book Snowdomes, this time the globe—which was the work of an enterprising souvenir vendor—featured a tiny ceramic version of the just-unveiled Eiffel Tower, and the whole ball fit in the palm of a hand. (An example of the globe lives at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass in Wisconsin.)
Most people get location-based snow globes as souvenirs to remember particularly eventful vacations, but apparently some people want mementos of the donut chains they visited. Or at least, that’s the only logic I could come up with for this Dunkin’ Donuts snow globe. The Grumpy Cat snow globe is perfect for anyone who loves memes, anyone that adores Tardar Sauce or anyone who simply hates snow globes. Best of all, it’s not even officially for sale right now, so if you pre-order it, you can claim that you ordered the Grumpy Cat snow globe before it was cool … but it was still awful. More details on custom snowglobes.
A few years later, a Viennese man Edwin Perzy developed the same idea when researching a way to improve operating room lights. A glass globe filled with water creates a magnifying lens by increasing refraction. To enhance the reflected light, Perzy put ground glass in the water. When it quickly sank, he tried semolina which floated slowly to the bottom of the globe. It did nothing to improve the light quality, but the snowfall inspired him to make his first snow globe: a reproduction of a Viennese shrine in a glass bulb with water, magnesium powder and rock. The snow domes were exquisitely and painstakingly produced and are still in production today where they make around 200,000 a year outside of Vienna.
Poinsettias have a mythic past. Poinsettias are a truly magical plant, according to one Christmas legend. A Mexican myth tells the tale of a poor young girl who gathered some weeds to give as a gift to Jesus on Christmas Eve at her church. When she laid the weeds down at the nativity scene, they suddenly transformed into a beautiful bouquet of bright red flowers, which are known as Flores de Noche Buena, or Flowers of the Holy Night, in Mexico. Some believe that the plant represents the star of Bethlehem. And others remember Dr. Joel Roberts Poinsett, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico who introduced Americans to the plant in 1828. Source: https://www.qstomize.com/collections/custom-snow-globe.