The first game in the history of the Wales national football team was in
1876, making Wales the third-oldest side in international association
football, after Scotland and England. Wales played annual games against
Scotland, England, and later Ireland, which became the British Home
Championship. Wales won their first championship in the 1906–07
tournament, three more titles during the 1920s, and four in the six
years prior to World War II. After the war, Wales played teams from
other European nations and began competing in the FIFA World Cup, but
failed to qualify in 1950 and 1954. Wales qualified in 1958, being
defeated by Brazil in the quarter-final. The side declined in the 1960s,
failing to qualify for a World Cup or the European Nations' Cup. Wales
won their last British Championship during the 1969–70 season, before
the competition was discontinued. Manager Mike Smith led the side to the
quarter-finals of the 1976 European Championships in their centenary
year, when they were defeated by Yugoslavia.
Read more:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Wales_national_football_team_%281876%E2%80%931976%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1942:
World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy achieved a Pyrrhic
victory against the United States at the Battle of the Santa Cruz
Islands.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Santa_Cruz_Islands>
1967:
American Catholic priest Philip Berrigan led a protest against
the Vietnam War by pouring blood over Selective Service records in
Baltimore, Maryland.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Berrigan>
1999:
Armed men led by Nairi Hunanyan attacked the National Assembly
of Armenia, killing prime minister Vazgen Sargsyan, president of the
National Assembly Karen Demirchyan, and six others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vazgen_Sargsyan>
2011:
Michael D. Higgins was elected president of Ireland with far
more votes than any politician in the country's history.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Irish_presidential_election>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
get a word in edgewise:
(US, usually in the negative) To break into or participate in a
conversation.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/get_a_word_in_edgewise>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being
of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to
look upward to the celestial crown above them. … If they gradually
grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of
usefulness is gone.
--Theodore Roosevelt
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt>