Winter Olympics

FIRSTS

The first Winter Olympic Games begun at Chamonix, in the French Alps on January 25, 1924, in connection with the Paris Summer Olympic Games held three months later. 16 nations took part and the host country failed to win any gold medals.

Dusan Zinaja at 1924 Winter Olympics Chamonix

The 1924 event in Chamonix was run by the French Olympic Committee but only recognised by the International Olympic Committee as official Winter Olympics after they had finished.

Ice hockey made its Olympic debut at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. The first Winter Olympics didn't take place until 1924.

The 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, were the first to be shown on television. The 1968 Games in Grenoble, France, were the first to be broadcast in color.

Man-made snow was used in the Olympics for the first time at the 1980 Games in Lake Placid.

When Australian short track speed skater Steven Bradbury won the 1,000 m event at the 2002 Winter Olympics, he became the first athlete from the Southern Hemisphere to win a Winter Olympic gold medal. Bradbury won because his four rivals all collided and he skated alone past the finish line. He named his autobiography Last Man Standing.

RECORDS

Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen has won the most Winter Olympic medals of any athlete: 15 (8 gold, 4 silver, and 3 bronze).

Marit Bjørgen 2013 By Frankie Fouganthin

Norwegian professional biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen has won more Winter Olympic medals than any other male (8 gold, 4 silver, and 1 bronze).

The oldest man to receive a Winter Olympics medal is 83-year-old Anders Haugen. The Norwegian-American actually received his ski jump bronze medal 50 years after he competed in 1924 when a scoring error was discovered in 1974.

Russian figure skater Yulia Lipnitskaya won gold in the team event at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, aged 15 years, 249 days. However, she is not younger than South Korean short track speed skater Kim Yun-Mi, who won gold medal in the 3000 m relay at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics aged 13.

Christa Luding-Rothenburger (East Germany) is the only athlete to ever win medals in both Winter and Summer Games in the same year: In 1998 she won speed skating gold at 1,000m (winter) and match sprint cycling silver (summer).

FUN WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES FACTS

Until 1992 Winter Olympics were held in the same year as Summer Games. Since then it has been in years midway between Summer Olympics.

The USA is the only country to have won at least one gold medal in every Winter Olympics. But Russia and Norway have both won more Winter Olympic medals and Winter Olympic golds than the USA.

No country in the southern hemisphere has ever even applied to host the Winter Olympics.

Philip Boit, became the first Kenyan to participate in the Winter Olympics, when competing in the 10 KM classic cross-country race at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. He came in last. The winner, Bjørn Dæhlie, waited for Boit to reach the finish line in order to hug him. The moment affected him so much Boit named his son after Dæhlie.

Steven Bradbury, a speedskater and Australia’s first gold medalist in the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics, won his medal by purposely going slower than the other four skaters and hoping that one or more of them would crash to secure at least a bronze. All four crashed near the finish line.

Sources Daily Express, WKYC

Tolpuddle Martyrs

The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six farm laborers of Tolpuddle, near Dorchester, England, who in 1834 were transported to Australia for forming a trade union. After nationwide agitation they were pardoned two years later.

In 1833 a group of farm laborers from the Dorset village of Tolpuddle formed a ‘friendly society' or early trade union after their wages fell to six shillings a week – about 30p today.

Led by laborer and Methodist local preacher George Loveless, the men agreed not to accept work for less than ten shillings a week and every member swore a secret oath of allegiance.

James Frampton, the landowner, was determined to stop industrial action; he reported the group to the Home Secretary Lord Melbourne. Melbourne recommended invoking the Unlawful Oaths Act 1797, an obscure law promulgated in response to the Spithead and Nore mutinies, which prohibited the swearing of secret oaths. 

The authorities arrested and put on trial Georger Loveless and five fellow workers George's brother James Loveless, George's brother in-law Thomas Standfield, Thomas's son John Standfield, James Brine, and James Hammett. 

On March 18, 1834 the six were convicted at crown court by a jury of farmers – the men who employed the defendants – and sentenced to seven years in an Australian penal colony for swearing an illegal oath to join their friendly society. 

The sentence caused public outrage and up to 100,000 people attended a demonstration in London. Over 800,000 signed petitions demanding their release and in 1836 the British government granted all six a full pardon. 

Only one man went back to live in Tolpuddle, the rest emigrated to Canada.

The sycamore tree where the union members met and swore their oath still stands today in Tolpuddle. 

The sycamore tree

Source Daily Mail

Strike

A strike, also called labor strike or strike action, is when a large number of workers stop working in protest. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. 

Amazon labor strike. Pixibay

The first ever labor strike in history took place on November 14, 1152BC. It was held by workers in the royal necropolis during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses III in ancient Egypt. The artisans of the Royal Necropolis at Deir el-Medina walked off their jobs because they had not been paid and the stoppage proved successful as the Egyptian authorities raised the wages.

The English word "strike" originated in 1768, when sailors, in support of demonstrations in London, "struck" or removed the topgallant sails of merchant ships at port, thus crippling the ships.

Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when the importance of mass labor in factories and mines gave the workers some power. 

In 1842 the demands for fairer wages and conditions across many different industries finally exploded into the first modern general strike. The nationwide stoppage started among the miners in Staffordshire, England, and soon spread through Britain affecting factories, mills in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and coal mines from Dundee to South Wales and Cornwall. 

Agitated workers face the factory owner in The Strike, painted by Robert Koehler in 1886

In 1844, policemen in New York City staged a strike against their proposed blue uniforms. The reason for their opposition was that they considered uniforms to be symbols of servitude, as maids and butlers wore them in the old country.

The Newsboys' Strike of 1899 lasted two weeks and forced US newspapers to pay their newsboys more. Until then, newsboys bought papers from the publishers and had to resell them to make money.

In 1909, the first hunger strike in a British prison was begun by Inverness-born suffragette Miss Marion Wallace Dunlop, after she was imprisoned for willful damage. She kept it up for 91 hours, until she was released from Holloway Prison on grounds of ill-health.

A seventeen-month-long strike action, which at its peak involved 15,000 coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers across 65 mines, began on March 9, 1910 in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, U.S.

The strike was sparked by a wage dispute between the miners and the mine owners, who were seeking to cut wages in response to a drop in coal prices. The miners, who were already working long hours in dangerous conditions, refused to accept the proposed wage cuts and instead went on strike.

The Westmoreland strike was a difficult and often violent affair, with clashes between strikers and mine owners, as well as between striking miners and those who continued to work during the strike. The strike also had a significant impact on the local economy, as many businesses that relied on the mining industry struggled to stay afloat.

In the end, the Westmoreland strike was only partially successful, with some miners returning to work under the new, lower wages, while others held out and eventually received higher wages and improved working conditions. The strike remains an important event in the history of the UMW and the labor movement in the United States, 

In 1917, 1,300 miners went on strike in Bisbee, Arizona over unsafe working conditions, low pay, and long hours. The mining company, Phelps Dodge, hired 2,000 men who on July 12, 1917 loaded the strikers at gunpoint into cattle cars for a 16 hour trip through the desert without food or water and left them in New Mexico.

The Winnipeg General Strike begun on Thursday May 15, 1919. By 11:00 am, almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Canada, had walked off the job. During the strike, members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police charged into the crowd of strikers on horseback, beating them with clubs and firing weapons. It was one of the most famous and influential strikes in Canadian history.

Crowd gathered outside old City Hall during the Winnipeg general strike, 

The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a nationwide stoppage that lasted 9 days, from May 3 - May 12.  It was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British government to act to prevent wage reduction and worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners.

Winston Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer during the General Strike. He proposed to force the striking miners back to work by cutting off poor relief to their wives and children.

Tyldesley miners outside the Miners’ Hall during the strike

Apprentice barbers in Copenhagen, Denmark, staged the longest strike in history from 1938 to 1961.

The largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country – and the first general wildcat strike in history – occurred in May 1968 in France. The prolonged stoppage involved eleven million workers for two weeks in a row, and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of the de Gaulle government. 

The picture below shows strikers in Southern France with a sign reading "Factory Occupied by the Workers." Behind them is a list of demands.

By BeenAroundAWhile at en.wikipedia,

The phrase "industrial action" used in British journalism for a strike was established in 1971. It is a curious choice of words, "inaction" would be more suitable.

On December 28, 1973, during the last of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Skylab missions, the crew turned off all communications with NASA after being over-worked and spent the day relaxing and looking at the Earth. It is the only strike to occur in space.

On October 24, 1975 an estimated 90 percent of women of Iceland took part in a "women’s day off" to protest wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices. Participants, led by women’s organizations, did not go to their paid jobs and did not do any housework or child-rearing for the whole day. Fathers had little choice but to bring their children to work or stay home themselves, leading them to call it "the long Friday."

The secret police in Communist Romania subjected the leaders of a 1977 coal miners' strike to 5-minute chest X-rays to ensure that they developed cancer.

In the early spring of 1981, several members of the quickly growing Polish Solidarity movement were brutally beaten up by the country's security services. On March 25, Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa met Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Rakowski of the Polish United Workers' Party, but their talks were fruitless. Two days later, a four-hour national warning strike took place. It was the biggest strike in the history of the Eastern Bloc, during which at least 12 million Poles walked off their jobs. On March 30, 1981, a day before the proposed national strike, the government of Poland reached agreement with Solidarity.

At 7 a.m. on August 3, 1981, the the US Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization declared a strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek. Two days later President Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization en masse for failing to carry out their oath to never strike as employees of the US federal government.

Until 1991 there was a 3 acre aquarium in Montreal. The aquarium closed down after all of the dolphin trainers went on strike, leaving the dolphins unfed for 38 days and causing most of them to die.

Major League Baseball players went on strike on August 12, 1994. The labor stoppage resulted in the premature termination of the season, and the cancellation of the World Series for the first time since 1904.

In 1998, Mickey Mouse went on strike at Disneyland Paris over a pay dispute.

Reformation

The Protestant Reformation in Christianity is a term used to describe a series of events that happened in the 16th century. Because of corruption within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, some people saw a need to reform the church.

The Reformation movement was anticipated from the 12th century by the Waldenses, Lollards and Hussites. They attacked the corruption of the clergy and stressed the importance of Scripture.

The movement became effective in the 16th century when the new centralized absolute monarchies gave support to reform by challenging the political power of the papacy and confiscated church wealth.

During the early 16th century, the papacy was earning a good income by the indulgences system that allowed Christians to purchase remission from penance in purgatory. In 1515, Pope Leo X started a new indulgence campaign, meaning letters excusing you from sin, to raise money for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, a church in Rome. Rich people sometimes even bought these in advance, for sins they planned on committing.

Appalled at this Martin Luther, a Catholic monk from Germany, nailed up on the church door at Wittenburg, his 95 Theses, (the standard way of raising issues for debate), arguing that a Christian has had a full pardon from God and no need of indulgences.

Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses

A reformed movement arose in Zurich, Switzerland in 1521 led by merchant Conrad Grebel and theologian Ulrich Zwingli. The adherents emphasized to a large extent the study of the Bible and belief in its supreme authority.

Around the same time, Nicholas Storch found the Abecedarian Anabaptist sect in Germany. Driven from Wittenburg by Luther, Storch traveled through Germany preaching the equality of all men and claiming that as knowledge of the Scriptures is communicated directly by the Holy Spirit, it is wrong to learn to read. He also attacked infant baptism and as a consequence his movement was attacked by both Catholics and Lutherans.

By the mid 1520s, millions of peasants were rebelling against the nobles in the name of equality of the humanity in front at God. Thomas Müntzer, a learned associate of Nicholas Storch, over-enthusiastically encouraged and guided a huge peasant revolt against the army of the princes. Müntzer was particularly inspired by Daniel 2:44, which outlines how the everlasting kingdom of God would consume all other kingdoms.

The revolt was crushed at Frankenhausen and Muntzer was captured and tortured to death on May 27, 1525.

Contemporary portrait of Thomas Müntzer.

Luther opposed their peasant war, lashing out at them in a paper Against the Murdering and Thieving Hordes of Peasants.

Many countries in Europe followed this trend of reformation and the continent was divided by denomination. Though not personally interested in religious reform, King Francis I of France initially maintained an attitude of tolerance, in accordance with his interest in the humanist movement.

After Francis was defeated at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and his subsequent capture, the French Parliament took advantage of the French king's absence and passed such anti-Lutheran laws as banning translations of the Bible into French.

By the turn of the 1530s, the name Protestants was in general use ending the religious unity of Western Europe

By Ernio48 -  Wikipedia Commons

The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V did not wish to see Spain or the rest of Habsburg Europe divided, and in light of continual threat from the Ottomans, preferred to see the Catholic Church reform itself from within. He persuaded Pope Paul III to inaugurate a Catholic Counter-Reformation to counter activities of the Reformation.

The Council of Trent was convened on December 13, 1545 as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation and it proceeded to meet intermittently for eighteen years. On adjourning, Pope Pius IV ratified all its decrees and definitions, which enjoined strict obedience upon all Roman Catholics. The decrees also stressed some points of faith that the Protestants' objections had put in danger such as the reinforcement of the seven sacraments and their beliefs on transubstantiation.

By the mid-17th century the present European alignment had been reached, with a separation of the Catholic and Protestant churches. The Peace of Westphalia of May 15, 1648 recognized Protestants, and is generally seen as the end of this process.

The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, (1648) by Gerard ter Borch

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Party

PARTIES IN ANCIENT TIMES 

The Greek philosopher Socrates had a large capacity for alcoholic beverages, and at drink and conversation get-togethers called symposium he astounded all who know him with his capacity for remaining sober, even after everyone else in the party had become thoroughly inebriated.

Plato's Symposium, depiction by Anselm Feuerbach

The oldest known party invitation was sent by the Roman Claudia Severa for her birthday party in Northumberland, England around AD100.

The Deipnosophistae ("The professors of dining") is an early 3rd-century AD work by Greek gourmet Athenaeus. This composition on food and food preparation is in the form of an aristocratic dinner party in which a number of learned men, some bearing the names of real persons, such as the famous physician Galen, meet at a banquet and discuss for days food, drink, literature and other subjects. They relate recipes for dishes such as stuffed vine leaves and several varieties of cheesecakes.

FAMOUS PARTIES IN HISTORY

Roller-skates made their first recorded appearance at a party in Carlisle House, London in 1760. Belgian inventor Joseph Merlin rolled into the party while playing the violin wore these first roller skates. It was not a successful introduction as the violinist crashed into a large mirror causing nearly a thousand dollars worth of damage.

For her twenty-first birthday, Marie Antoinette participated in a three-day long gambling party, in which huge amounts of money changed hands.

At George Washington's 1787 farewell party, 56 people drank 60 bottles of claret, 54 bottles of Madeira, 8 bottles of hard cider, 8 bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of porter, and 7 large bowls of alcoholic punch; the bar tab cost $15 000 in today's money.

Isambard Brunel staged a dinner party in the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe for businessmen in 1827 wearing full evening dress.

The sport of badminton derives its name from around 1870, when it was played at a party given by the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton, his estate, and became known as "the Badminton game."

Badminton House in the 19th century.

'Field Tennis' was played in the 18th century, but the game similar to the modern game of lawn tennis was introduced by Major Walter Wingfield at a Christmas party at Nantclywd, Wales, in 1873. His game was called sphairistike.

In 1886 the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII of the United Kingdom) appeared at a dinner party in New York in a short black coat rather than a tailcoat. One of the other guests took the fashion back to Tuxedo Park, an upstate New York countryside enclave for Manhattan's wealthiest citizens. There, the trendy men about town started chopping of their tailcoats, which became known as tuxedos.

The Khodynka Tragedy was a human stampede that occurred on May 30, 1896, on Khodynka Field in Moscow, Russia during a coronation party following the crowning of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II. 1,389 people were trampled to death in a stampede caused by rumors of beer and pretzels at the festivities.

A victim of the stampede

The first ever cocktail party in England was hosted by noted war artist Christopher R.W. Nevinson on April 26, 1924.  Within two years, cocktail parties had changed the English cultural landscape becoming a byword for everything the old disapproved of and the young aspired to.

By takomabibelot - Cocktail Party At The Imperial Hotel: March 13, 1961 

In response to critics calling him a "dictator," Franklin D. Roosevelt once threw a toga party where he played Caesar.

The American Hormel Foods Corporation started marketing Hormel Spiced Ham in the mid 1930s. As it didn't stand out from other brands Jay C Hormel asked his New Year's Eve party guests to help and a Kenneth Daigneau came up with the succinct "spam."

The first Christmas party held at the US Embassy in the USSR in 1934 featured three performing seals, who came into the room balancing a Christmas tree, a tray of glasses, and a bottle of champagne. When the performance ended, the seal's trainer, who was drunk, passed out, and the seals galloped free throughout the house.

Alfred Hitchcock once threw a dinner party where all the food was colored blue.

16-year-old John Lennon first met 15-year-old Paul McCartney at a St Peter's Parish Church party in 1957 in Woolton, Liverpool.

One of most famous parties of the 20th century, Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball was held at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on November 28, 1966. The masquerade ball was held in honor of The Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and cost Capote a total of $16,000. The Black and White Ball was credited with starting an immediate upsurge in masquerade and costume parties.

During the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, to help USA/USSR relations, astronauts and cosmonauts played smuggled audio recordings of glasses clinking, laughter, and many female voices. Houston radioed to ask what’s going on. "Oh nothing,” they said. “We finished work, just having a party up here."

Actor Will Smith also had a successful career as a rapper under the pseudonym, "The Fresh Prince" as part of a duo with Jeffrey "DJ Jazzy Jeff" Townes. The pair met in 1985 when Townes, who was performing at a house-party near Smith's house, needed a hype man, as his normal guy hadn't shown up. Smith, who was only 17 years old at this point, happily filled in.

The actor Leonardo DiCaprio's face was severely injured when model Aretha Wilson hit him over the head with a broken bottle at a Hollywood party. After pleading guilty in 2010, Wilson was sentenced to prison for two years.

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi  had a volcano built at his 148 acre estate in Porto Rotondo, Sardinia, in 2006. With fireworks and a small earthquake, it was intended as a surprise at a party. Neighbors, unaware, called out he local fire fighters.

Stephen Hawking once tried to lure time travellers to his house by throwing a party then sending out invitations later. Nobody showed up. The party was a simple affair, with champagne, canapes, and balloons. Hawking himself was there, sitting in his wheelchair and wearing a tuxedo. He even had a banner made that said "Welcome Time Travelers."

FUN PARTY FACTS

The word ‘party’ meaning a part or division, or one side in a dispute dates back to about 1300.‘Party’ was first used for a social event, with food, drink and fun, in the early 18th century.

The term "housewarming" is descended from medieval times when they were thrown for people  moving into their new home. Each guest would bring firewood, and build fires in all the available fireplaces, offering firewood as a gift.

In the Lonely Planet "1000 Ultimate Experiences" guide of 2009, Belgrade was placed at the 1st spot among the top 10 party cities in the world.

Over two million people gather on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro on the night of 31 December, making of it the world's largest New Year's Eve party.

Rio New Year fireworks

During the reign of Catherine I of Russia, the rules for parties stipulated that no man was to get drunk before 9 o'clock and ladies weren't to get drunk at any hour.

Jane Austen was the earliest known writer to use the expression 'dinner-party' in Emma. She wrote in her 1816 novel. "Dinner-parties and evening-parties were made for him and his lady; and invitations flowed in so fast that she had soon the pleasure of apprehending they were never to have a disengaged day."

Six weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Nelson spent an exorbitant £308 (about $550) on port as he was planning a monumental party to mark his forthcoming victory.

J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis once showed up at a party dressed as polar bears—it wasn't a costume party.

The singer Taylor Swift was born on December 13, 1989. She has a Christmas-themed birthday party every year.

Taylor Swift has trademarked the phrase," "party like it's 1989."

World Party Day designated as a universal day of coordinated events celebrating "universal human right to fun, peace and life" occurs on April 3rd each year. The inspiration is the novel Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel, by Vanna Bonta published in 1995, which concludes with a synchronized worldwide celebration that occurs on April 3, 2000.

Americans will hold more parties in their homes on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year.

Sources Daily Express, Daily Mail

Paralympic Games

Paralympics is the equivalent of the Olympic Games for disabled people. They are held every four years where possible in the same city or country as the Olympic Games.

The word Paralympics combines the word Para (the Greek preposition for beside or alongside) with the word Olympics because the games happen parallel to the Summer and Winter Olympics.

The Paralympics have grown from a small gathering of British World War II veterans in 1948 to become one of the largest international sport events by the early 21st century.

MILESTONES

The event was inaugurated at the Olympic Games, in Rome between September 18 - 25 September 1960. 400 athletes competed in the "Parallel Olympics", which became known as the first Paralympics.

The Games were initially open only to athletes in wheelchairs; at the 1976 Summer Games in Toronto, Canada, athletes with different disabilities were included for the first time at a Summer Paralympics.

The Soviet Union refused to host the 1980 Paralympics, stating that none of their citizens had disabilities.

It was at the 1988 Summer Paralympics in Seoul, South Korea, that the Paralympic Summer Games were first held directly after the Olympic Summer Games, in the same host city, and using the same facilities. Since then, all Paralympic Games are now held in the same city that hosted the Olympics, with a two-week gap between each.

Australian flag bearer Paul Croft at the Opening Ceremony. By Australian Paralympic Committee, 

The 1992 Winter Paralympics in Tignes and Albertville, France were the first Winter Games to use the same facilities as the Winter Olympics.

Spain's basketball team was stripped of their Special Olympic gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics after it was discovered they organized a team of healthy individuals to pose as mentally handicapped.

The current Paralympic flag was first flown during the Closing Ceremony of the Athens Paralympic Games in 2004.

The Paralympic flag By Scazon - http://www.flickr.com/photos/scazon/3616974103/

The Paralympic motto is "Spirit in Motion". The motto was introduced in 2004 at the Paralympic Games in Athens. The previous motto was "Mind, Body, Spirit", introduced in 1994.

FUN FACTS

Paralympic athletes have many different kinds of disabilities, so there are several categories in which the athletes compete. The disabilities are in six broad categories: amputee, Cerebral Palsy, intellectual disability, wheelchair, visually impaired, and Les Autres (This means "The Others" in French.)

Those who are deaf, cannot participate in the Paralympics, a separate sports event called the [Deaflympics] is held to cater to them.

There are only four sports in the Paralympic Games out of the total 20 that are not part of the Olympic Games. They are goal ball, boccia, wheelchair rugby, and powerlifting.

Paralympic medals have steel balls inside them which, when shaken, makes a rattling sound that helps notify visually impaired athletes to determine between medals.

Lee Pearson, winner of ten Paralympic gold medals for dressage, is allergic to horses.

Randburgsun.co.za

Parade

The 4th of July Parade in Bristol, Rhode Island, is the oldest continuous Independence Day celebration in the U.S. The town has thrown the celebration every year since 1785.

Poet/writer Edgar Allan Poe was expelled from West Point, the United States Military Academy, for showing up for a public parade wearing only a white belt and gloves.

The first Mardi Gras parade held in New Orleans is recorded to have taken place in 1837.

Krewe of Kosmic Debris revelers on Frenchmen Street. By Infrogmation of New Orleans 

The first ticker-tape parade took place in New York City in 1886 when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty was dedicated.

Daniel David Palmer founder of chiropractic died after he was struck by an automobile driven by his son, during a homecoming parade at the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa on October 20, 1913.

The first Macy's Thanksgiving Parade took place on November 27, 1924. It was organized by store employees and featured animals—including bears and elephants—borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. Santa arrived on a float in the form of a sled driven by reindeer over a mountain of ice. Once he was seated on a throne, the store's Christmas windows were unveiled.

The first Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic was held in Chicago on August 11, 1929. The Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic was founded by Robert S. Abbott, the publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper The parade was named after the fictional character "Bud Billiken," a symbol of pride, hope, and possibility for African American children.

Over the years, the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic grew in popularity and size, becoming the largest African American parade in the United States. It has continued to be a symbol of unity, cultural pride, and celebration within the African American community in Chicago and beyond. The event typically takes place on the second Saturday in August. 

The Macy's Parade was halted during World War II. There were rubber and helium shortages, so Macy’s canceled the parade from 1942 to 1944. The company deflated its rubber balloons—which weighed 650 pounds total—and donated them to the government.

NBC made the first coast-to-coast NTSC color broadcast on January 1, 1954 when it telecast the Tournament of Roses Parade, with public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers.

The largest inaugural parade was for Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. It lasted more than four hours.

In 1993, Sonic the Hedgehog became the first video game character to feature in the Macy's Parade The debut did not go well: strong winds blew the giant balloon into a lamppost and punctured it.

The Chicago Cubs World Series celebration of 2016 was the largest human gathering in U.S. history and the seventh largest in human history.

The longest parade in the world is the Hanover Schützenfest that takes place in Hanover, Germany, every year during the Schützenfest. The parade is 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) long with more than 12,000 participants from all over the world, among them more than 100 bands and around 70 floats and carriages.

Hanover Schützenfest By Frankfour - Wikipedia

Queen Elizabeth II had two birthdays: one on her actual date of birth, April 21, and one on a Saturday in June because April weather is too cold for a parade in the UK.

New York is said to have the world's biggest St Patrick's Day parade and celebration, with 150,000 in the parade and an audience of about 3 million.

The people who design the balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade are called “Balloonatics.”

Olympic Games

FORERUNNER

The first Wenlock Olympian Games, a precursor to the modern Olympics, was centred on the little market town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire, England, in 1850.

The Games were founded by Dr William Penny Brookes, who took inspiration from the Ancient Greeks’ sporting contest.

The first meeting was held at Much Wenlock racecourse on October 22-23, 1850. Early Games included cycling on penny farthings, a blindfolded wheelbarrow race and an old women’s race.

The first National Olympian Games were held in London in 1866 and were organised by the National Olympian Association which had been co-founded by Brookes in 1865.

1896 OLYMPICS

The successful campaign to revive the Olympics was started in France by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin

At first, there was opposition to his proposal. Undaunted, Coubertin pursued his aim and in 1894 he sent out invitations to all sporting organisations in the world to an international athletic congress to be held at Paris' Sorbonne University between June 16-23,1894. In the agenda drawn up for the meeting, the main object in Coubertin's mind - the Olympics' revival - was shrewdly listed only eighth.

When, after much wearying discussion of the preceding seven topics, the meeting eventually reached the eighth item on the last day, the tired delegates were so anxious to conclude that no one tried to argue, and the motion was carried easily.

It was also agreed to offer Greece the honor of being host nation for the first of the resurrected Games.

On April 6, 1896, in the presence of a crowd of 50,000, the King of Greece declared the first of the new series of Olympic Games open at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.

Opening ceremony in the Panathinaiko Stadium

The Games consisted of 43 events. They brought together 14 nations and 241 athletes mostly from Greece, Germany and France.

Winners received a silver medal and a crown of olive branches, with bronze for the runners-up.

On April 6, 1896 an American college student named James Connolly won the triple jump, becoming the first Olympic champion in over 1,500 years.

The first swimming event of the Olympics involves three Greek sailors jumping off a rowing boat and racing over 100 metres.

Greece won the most medals (46), and the United States won the most gold medals (11).

The ten-man United States track and field team reached Athens barely in time to participate, but won nine out of the 12 events they competed in.

OLYMPICS 1900-PRESENT DAY

The Olympic Games held at the Paris Exposition in 1900 did not have a stadium, but were notable for being the first time women took part in the Games.

The first sportswomen to compete in the Paris Games were Mme. Brohy and Mlle. Ohnier of France in croquet.

The first female champion was Charlotte Cooper of Great Britain in tennis.

Charlotte Cooper, first woman Olympic champion, in the 1900 Games

Competitions at the 1900 Games began on May 14 and ended five months later on October 28.

The 1904 Olympic Games were held during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis. Roughly 650 athletes participated, but due to the cost, time and difficulty of travelling to St Louis, 523 of them were US Citizens.

For the first time gold, silver and bronze medals for the first three were awarded at the 1904 Olympics.

Archery was the only sport for women at the 1904 Olympics.

Women's swimming was introduced in 1912.

The 1908 Olympics were held in London. The Bishop of Pennsylvania epitomized the true spirit of the Games (and, indeed, of all sports) in an often quoted observation during a sermon at the Games that "the important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning, but taking part, for the essential thing in life is not so much conquering as fighting well."

The first usage of electronic timing and public address systems was at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.

The first Olympic fatality occurred at the 1912 Stockholm games when Francisco Lázaro tried to run a marathon covered in animal fat (it was to prevent sunburn). Before the race, he had supposedly said: "Either I win or I die."

The 1916 Summer Olympics were due to take place in Berlin, Germany, but were cancelled, due to World War I. Following the war, the Olympics were awarded to Antwerp to "honor the suffering of the Belgian people".

The Olympic flag was adopted in 1914 and flown for the first time only at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. It has since been hoisted during each celebration of the Games.

The Olympic flag

The first Winter Olympic Games begin at Chamonix, in the French Alps, in 1924, in connection with the Paris Games held three months later.

The Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius, a Latin expression meaning "Faster, Higher, Stronger" was proposed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1894 and has been official since 1924. The motto was coined by Coubertin's friend, the Dominican priest Henri Didon OP, for a Paris youth gathering of 1891.

Women's Olympic athletics and gymnastics were held for the first time at the 1928 Summer Olympics at Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Since Brazil could not afford to send a team to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, they sent the athletes on a ship full of coffee. The athletes sold the coffee along the way to fund their journey.

In 1936 The Nazis introduced the Olympic torch relay to promote the Olympics in Berlin. German sculptor Walter Lemcke designed the first Olympic torch, which began the tradition of taking the Olympic Flame to the host city.  It went from Olympia to Berlin, and involved 3,331 carriers, each one running about 1km.

The Germans also introduced the Olympic rings by deceitfully carving them into the ancient stones at Olympia for a propaganda film about the Olympics. They were mistakenly thought to be an ancient Greek symbol, after researchers in the 1950s found a stone with the symbol carved on it in Delphi. The stone turned out to be a leftover from the film.

Olympic Rings

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences. The 1956 Winter Olympics were the first internationally televised Olympic Games.

Art was an Olympic sport from 1912 to 1948. It was split into five general categories: Architecture, Literature, Music, Painting, and Sculpting. The competition was dropped because artists were considered professionals while, at the time, the games only allowed amateurs to compete.

The equivalent of the Olympic Games for disabled people was inaugurated at the 1960 Olympic Games, in Rome. 400 athletes competed in the "Parallel Olympics", which became known as the first Paralympics.

Zambia is the only country to have entered an Olympics as one country (Northern Rhodesia) and left the games as another. Zambia declared independence on the last day of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

In 1980, US President Jimmy Carter announced a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

The Olympic mascot was introduced in 1968. It has played an important part of the Games' identity promotion since the 1980 Summer Olympics, when the Russian bear cub Misha reached international stardom.

The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles was so profitable that profits continue to help fund youth sports as recently as in the 2010s.

The first time in Olympic history that every country competing included female athletes was at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Great Britain.

OLYMPIC FUN FACTS

Australia, France, Great Britain, Greece and Switzerland are the only countries to be represented at every Olympic Games since their inception in 1896.

Great Britain is the only country to have won at least one gold medal at every Summer Olympics.

The fourth-place through eighth-place finishers in an Olympic final event do not receive medals, but they do get paper “Olympic diplomas.”

The only sport on the Olympic program that features men and women competing together is the equestrian disciplines. There is no "Women's Eventing", or 'Men's Dressage'.

The United States has hosted eight Olympic Games, four Summer and four Winter, more than any other nation.

London holds the distinction of hosting three Olympic Games, all Summer, more than any other city.

The appearance of countries at the Olympics Opening Ceremony is based on the alphabet of the host country.

Sources Compton's Encyclopedia, Europress Encyclopedia

Ancient Olympic Games

HISTORY 

The Ancient Greek Olympic Games are thought to have begun in 776 BC.

The games were staged in the wooded valley of Olympia in Elis. Here the Greeks erected statues and built temples in a grove dedicated to Zeus, supreme among the gods. The greatest shrine was an ivory and gold statue of Zeus. Created by the sculptor Phidias, it was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The palaestra of Olympia, devoted to the training of athletes. By User: Bgabel

The games were always held at Olympia rather than moving between different locations as is the practice with the modern Olympic Games.

To begin with, the Olympic Games were confined to one day - the day of the first full moon after the summer solstice.

During the first 13 Games recorded, the foot race was the sole event. The stadion sprint was a race over about 190 metres (620 ft), measured after the feet of Hercules. The word stadium is derived from this race.

The custom of nude sprinting began in 720 because one runner's loin cloth fell off; he won, so others copied him.

In 716BC two more races were added to the Olympic Games, a two-stadia sprint (1200 feet) and one where 24 lengths of the stadium was run.

Three runners featured on an Attic black-figured Panathenaic prize amphora. By Marie-Lan Nguyen 

The first Olympians in Greece celebrated victory wearing wreaths of bay and parsley from a sacred olive tree that grew behind the temple of Zeus. According to tradition this tree was planted by Hercules, founder of the games. The winners marched around the grove to the accompaniment of a flute while admirers chanted songs written by a prominent poet.

EVENTS

Wrestling is recorded as being introduced at the 18th Olympiad in 708. Three throws were necessary for a win.

The pentathlon was also added in 708. This pentathlon was a five-event match consisted of running, wrestling, leaping, throwing the discus, and hurling the javelin.

Ancient Olympic javelin throwers would wrap a leather throng around the javelin that would act as a kind of sling, applying spin to the javelin to aid distance.

A special event was known as the Pancratium, from the Greek, meaning "all strength," in which the entire body served as a weapon. The fighters were naked and used methods of boxing and wrestling; they hit, strangled, and twisted the limbs of the opponent. To kick the other man in the stomach or to break his fingers was fair. Only gouging and biting were disallowed.

The bout ended only when one of the contestants yielded or, as was frequently the case, with his death. The Greeks invented sports medicine in response to this event. Realizing the cruelty of the Pancration, the Greeks eventually omitted it from their programs.

Pankration scene: a pankriatiast tries to gouge his opponent's eye; From an Attic red-figure kylix

The chariot race was probably the Ancient Olympics' most dangerous sport. It was so popular that it replaced sprinting as the opening event of the games.

ATHLETES

Through each of these contests the emphasis on winning was paramount and the champions were treated as celebrities.

The first Olympic champion listed in the records was a cook, Coroebus of Elis. He won the sprint race in 776 BC.

Athletes from any Greek city-state and kingdom were allowed to participate, although the Hellanodikai, the officials in charge, allowed king Alexander I of Macedon to participate in the games only after he had proven his Greek ancestry.

Arrhichion was a champion pankratiast, a martial art blending boxing and wrestling.  He died while successfully defending his championship in the pankration at the 54th Olympiad (564 BC), when his opponent suffocated him, but didn't realize that he had killed Arrhichion and surrendered due to his injuries. He is the only person to have won an Olympic event while dead.

Cynisca, the daughter of King Archidamus II of Sparta, was the first woman to win at the Olympic Games. Princess Cynisca first entered the Olympics in 396 BC, where she won first prize competing in the sport of chariot racing, with a team of horses she had trained herself. 

Leonidas of Rhodes' Olympic Record of 12 individual victories (164 - 152 BC) stood for over 2100 years before being eclipsed by Michael Phelps in 2016.

The Roman emperor Nero won a number of Olympic titles for horse riding, tragedy and harp, singing competitions and declamation. In all these cases the competition finished with a crown adorning his head, a "feat" probably achieved by bribing the judges.

Athletes who made false starts in running races were publicly whipped and humiliated.

The Greeks used onions to fortify their athletes for the Olympic Games. Before competition, athletes consumed many pounds of onions and drunk onion juice.  Furthermore, they rubbed onions on their bodies in preparation.

Competitors found cheating were fined. The money would pay for a statue of Zeus with a plaque shaming the offender, and placed on the road to the stadium.

Women were banned from competing, mainly because the Greek men competed naked, although there were victorious women chariot owners.

SPECTATORS

Crowds of up to 40,000 people were attracted to the stadium at Olympia to watch the Olympics.

An artist's impression of ancient Olympia

In the month before the ancient Olympics no wars were permitted so that spectators could travel from across Greece unharmed.

The only married woman allowed to watch the ancient Olympics was the Priestess of Demeter. Any other married woman spectator was threatened with being thrown to her death from a cliff.

ABOLISHMENT

Under Roman rule the Olympic Games continued to be held. However, after an existence of almost 1,200 years, the decline of Greek culture led to the deterioration of the event.

The new Christian teaching of the sinfulness of the body, and its abhorrence of heathen practice, dealt the deathblow to the Games, which were finally banned in AD 393 by the Christian Emperor, Theodosius I, as he believed they encouraged "pagan idolatry."

When Theodosius I's grandson, Theodosius II, learned that in spite of the prohibition the contests were still being held at Olympia, he had its buildings burned to he ground and the last physical traces of the Olympics thus disappeared.

Sources Compton's Encyclopedia, Europress Encyclopedia