Opening paragraphs......................

In the summer of 1850, in Hyde Park in London, there arose a most extraordinary structure:  a giant iron-and-glass greenhouse covering nineteen acres of ground and containing within its airy vastness enough room for four St. Paul's Cathedrals.  For the short time of its existence, it was the biggest building on Earth.  Known formally as the Palace of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, it was incontestably magnificent, but all the more so for being so sudden, so startlingly glassy, so gloriously and unexpectedly there.  Douglas Jerrold, a columnist for the weekly magazine Punch, dubbed it the Crystal Palace, and the name stuck.
-Bill Bryson,  At Home:  A Short History of Private Life