Fleetwood Park was a 19th-century American harness racing track in the Bronx, New York City. The races were a popular form of entertainment, drawing crowds as large as 10,000. The one-mile (1.6 km) course described an unusual shape, with four turns in one direction and one in the other. For the last five years of operation, Fleetwood was part of trotting's Grand Circuit, one travel guide calling it "the most famous trotting track in the country". The track operated under several managements between 1870 and 1898, most notably the New York Driving Club, consisting of many wealthy New York businessmen, including members of the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller families as well as former US president Ulysses S. Grant and Robert Bonner, owner of the New York Ledger. Economic pressures forced the track to close in 1898, and within two years the property was being subdivided into residential building lots. The meandering route of modern 167th Street runs along a portion of the old racecourse.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleetwood_Park_Racetrack
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1814:
Sweden and Denmark–Norway signed the Treaty of Kiel, whereby Frederick VI of Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden in return for the Swedish holdings in Pomerania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Kiel
1969:
A major fire and series of explosions aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise killed 28 sailors, injured 314 others, and destroyed 15 aircraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire
1970:
The self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra in southeastern Nigeria surrendered to the federal government less than three years after declaring independence, ending the Nigerian Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War
2018:
In the "Minneapolis Miracle", American football player Stefon Diggs caught a 61-yard touchdown pass that secured the Minnesota Vikings' victory in the National Football Conference divisional playoff game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Miracle
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
siglum: 1. A letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word; specifically, one used in a modern literary work to refer to an early version of a text. 2. (figurative) A thing which represents something else; a sign, a symbol. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/siglum
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. We have reached the point of regarding each other only as members of a people either allied with us or against us and our approach; prejudice, sympathy, or antipathy are all conditioned on that. Now we must rediscover the fact that we — all together — are human beings, and that we must strive to concede to each other what moral capacity we have. --Albert Schweitzer https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer