In 1976, George Willig and Jerry Hewitt climbed the Unisphere as part of a short documentary made by New York University student Paul Hornstein. According to the "New York Daily News", Hornstein said he wanted "to prove that we can do a full-scale, high-quality movie production on our own". The Unisphere was also scaled in September 2019, when Glen Schleyer, a member of the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, hung up a banner protesting the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires. He chose the Unisphere because it celebrates the World's Fair theme of "peace through understanding".