Roy of the Rovers is a British comic strip about the life and exploits
of a fictional footballer named Roy Race, who played for Melchester
Rovers. The strip first appeared in the Tiger in 1954, before giving
its name to a weekly (and later monthly) comic magazine, published by
IPC and Fleetway from 1976 until 1995, in which it was the main
feature. The weekly strip ran until 1993, following Roy's playing
career until its conclusion after he lost his left foot in a helicopter
crash. When the monthly comic was launched later that year, the focus
switched to Roy's son, Rocky, who also played for Melchester. This
publication folded after only 19 issues. The adventures of the Race
family were subsequently featured from 1997 until May 2001 in the
monthly Match of the Day football magazine, in which father and son
were reunited as manager and player respectively. Football-themed
stories were a staple of British comics from the 1950s onwards, and Roy
of the Rovers was one of the most popular. To keep the strip exciting,
Melchester was almost every year either competing for major honours or
struggling against relegation to a lower division. The strip followed
the structure of the football season, thus there were several months
each year when there was no football.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_of_the_Rovers>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1297:
First War of Scottish Independence: The Scots defeated English troops
at the Battle of Stirling Bridge on the River Forth near Stirling.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stirling_Bridge>
1709:
An allied British-Dutch-Austrian force defeated the French at the
Battle of Malplaquet, one of the bloodiest battles of the War of the
Spanish Succession.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Malplaquet>
1789:
U.S. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, co-writer of the Federalist
Papers, became the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton>
1945:
The Japanese-run camp at Batu Lintang, Sarawak in Borneo was liberated
by the Australian 9th Division, averting the planned massacre of its
2,000-plus Allied POWs and civilian internees by four days.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batu_Lintang_camp>
1992:
The eye of Hurricane Iniki, the most powerful hurricane to strike the
state of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Islands in recorded history, passed
directly over the island of Kauai, killing six people and causing
around USD$1.8 billion dollars in damage.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Iniki>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
masochism (n):
The enjoyment of receiving pain
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masochism>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
On September 11, 2001, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a
writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow — the
planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion
cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered
figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I
pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that
day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my
ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank
stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene
satisfaction.
--Barack Obama
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Barack_Obama>