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 …