[Wikipedia] September 4: Australia at the Winter Olympics

[Faraaz Damji]

   Australia's participation in the Winter Olympics began with the 1936
   Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.  Since then, Australia has
   participated in every Winter Olympics, with the exception of the 1948
   Games in St.  Moritz.  Australia achieved its first medal, a bronze, in
   1994 in the men's 5,000 metres short track relay event.  Zali Steggall
   gained Australia's first individual medal in 1998 when she won bronze
   in the slalom event.  In 2002, Steven Bradbury won gold in the 1,000
   metres short track speed skating and Alisa Camplin won gold in the
   aerials event, making Australia the only southern hemisphere country
   to have ever accomplished gold at a Winter Olympics.  Australia sent 40
   competitors to compete in 10 sports at the 2006 Games in Turin, a
   record number of athletes and events for the nation.  For the first
   time, there was a stated aim of winning a medal, and this goal was
   achieved when Dale Begg-Smith won the gold medal in men's moguls
   freestyle skiing.  Camplin attained her second medal, a bronze in the
   aerials event.

Read the rest of this article:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_at_the_Winter_Olympics


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Today's selected anniversaries:

476:
   Germanic leader Odoacer captured Ravenna and deposed Romulus
   Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustus)

1260:
   Wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines: The Siena Ghibellines defeated
   the Florence Guelphs at the Battle of Montaperti outside of Siena in
   Italy.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Montaperti)

1886:
   After over 25 years of fighting against the United States Army and
   the armed forces of Mexico, Geronimo of the Chiricahua Apache
   surrendered at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geronimo)

1888:
   American Inventor George Eastman registered the trademark "Kodak"
   after receiving a patent for his roll film camera.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eastman)

1957:
   Defying the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v.  Board of
   Education, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas
   National Guard to prevent African American students from attending
   Little Rock's Central High School.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine)


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Wiktionary's Word of the day:

   caesura: A a pause or interruption in a poem, music, building or other
   work of art.
   (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caesura)


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Wikiquote of the day:

   Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy
   moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like
   that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of
   several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.  -- François-René de
   Chateaubriand
   (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois-Ren%C3%A9_de_Chateaubriand)