Showing posts with the label Sports

Bottle Kicking in Hallaton

Dec 18, 2023

In the village of Hallaton in Leicestershire, England, a unique tradition unfolds every Easter Monday. The residents of Hallaton and the nea...

Cotswold Olimpick Games

Nov 8, 2022

The town of Chipping Campden, in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England, has been holding their own “Olympic” games since the 17t...

Shizo Kanakuri: The Man Who Took 54 Years To Finish a Marathon

Oct 5, 2022

Shizo Kanakuri was not a slow runner. In fact, he reportedly set the world record by completing a 40-km marathon run in 2 hours, 32 minutes,...

The 1904 Olympic Marathon Was The Worst Race Ever

Sep 20, 2022

On a hot August afternoon in 1904, with temperatures hovering above the nineties (32 degree centigrade), thirty-two men dressed largely in w...

Australia’s First Tour of England in 1868 Was Made by an Aboriginal Cricket Team

Jul 29, 2022

Sports has been an important way to bridge different cultures. For the aboriginal Australians and their colonial settlers, it was cricket. ...

Frank Hayes: The Only Dead Man in History to Win a Race

Jan 4, 2022

Many sports pushes the human body to the limit, and this exertion can prove fatal for some. Frank Hayes was one such casualty, and while the...

The Case of The Missing Sri Lankan Handball Team

Nov 23, 2021

The Sri Lankan sports authority has a problem. Their athletes keep disappearing. They go to foreign countries to take part in sporting event...

One-Armed Versus One-Legged Cricket

Oct 27, 2021

In 1861, Charles Dickens reported, in his magazine All the Year Round , a rather eccentric cricket match being played at Peckham Rye in the ...

The Wenlock Olympian Games That Inspired Modern Olympics

Jul 17, 2021

The first modern Olympic Games was held in Athens in 1896, but it was the small British town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire where the Olympic...

Henley-On-Todd: The Waterless Regatta

Dec 8, 2020

Every August, Alice Springs, a large town in the heart of Australia’s Northern Territory, holds an unusual boat race on Todd River, a river ...

The Disgrace of Gijon: The Match That Changed World Cup Football

Sep 21, 2020

For the first time in the history of FIFA World Cup, the 1982 edition of the tournament in Spain saw 24 teams take part instead of the usual...

Anthropology Days: The Racist Olympic Event of 1904

Sep 8, 2020

Starting from the late 19th century through the early 20th, human exhibitions were a routine part of circuses, traveling shows, and major ex...

Vinkensport: Belgium’s Competitive Bird Calling

Sep 4, 2020

In the Flanders region of Belgium, a favorite pastime among the old Dutch-speaking folks is raising and training the common chaffinch ( Frin...

Bull Running in Britain

Aug 28, 2020

Bull running as a sport is mostly associated with the city of Pamplona, in northern Spain. But until the 19th century, Britain had a similar...

Battle of Surfaces: The Epic Nadal Vs Federer Match

Aug 25, 2020

In the spring of 2007, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were two of the best tennis players in the world. But they excelled on different surfa...

Arrhichion, The Olympic Champion Who Won After His Death

Aug 25, 2020

Pankration was a violet sport. Practiced in ancient Greece, this brutal combination of boxing and wrestling had virtually no rules. The obje...

The Cobbled Hell of Trouée d'Arenberg

Jun 13, 2020

The famous cobblestone road through the forest of Saint-Amand-Wallers, in France. Photo: Radu Razvan/Shutterstock.com The forest of Sain...

Out of Place Ski Jumps

Nov 25, 2019

Competitive skiing as a sport developed in Norway in the later part of the 19th century. Sondre Norheim, who is recognized as the “Father of...

The Forgotten Sport of Octopus Wrestling

Jun 29, 2017

One April morning in 1963, some five thousand spectators gathered on the shores of Puget Sound near the Tacoma Narrows, in Washington, to wa...

The World’s Longest Surfing Wave at Chicama, Peru

Sep 10, 2016

The small coastal town of Puerto Chicama, in northwestern Peru, is home to the longest, the most perfect, left-breaking wave in the world. H...