The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and
sports held near Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. They
probably began in 1612, and have continued on and off since
(1636 depiction shown). They were started by a local lawyer, Robert
Dover, with the approval of King James. Events included horse-racing,
coursing with hounds, running, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting
with swords, and wrestling. By the time of James's death in 1625, many
Puritan landowners had forbidden their workers to attend, and the
outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 brought the Games to an end.
Revived after the Restoration of 1660, they gradually degenerated into a
drunk and disorderly country festival. They ended again in 1852, when
the common land on which they had been staged was partitioned and
enclosed. Since 1966 the Games have been held each year on the Friday
after Spring Bank Holiday. Events have included the tug of war,
gymkhana, shin-kicking, dwile flonking, motor cycle scrambling, judo,
piano smashing, and morris dancing. The British Olympic Association has
recognised the Cotswold Olimpick Games as "the first stirrings of
Britain's Olympic beginnings".
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotswold_Olimpick_Games>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1223:
Mongol invasions: Mongol forces defeated a combined army of
Kiev, Galich, and the Cumans at the Kalchik River in present-day
Ukraine.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Kalka_River>
1669:
Citing poor eyesight, English naval administrator and Member of
Parliament Samuel Pepys recorded his last entry in his diary, one of the
most important primary sources for the English Restoration period.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys>
1935:
A 7.7 Mw earthquake struck Balochistan in the British Raj, now
part of Pakistan, killing anywhere between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Balochistan_earthquake>
1981:
An organized mob of police and government-sponsored
paramilitias began burning the public library in Jaffna, Sri Lanka,
destroying over 97,000 items in one of the most violent examples of
ethnic biblioclasm of the 20th century.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Jaffna_library>
2009:
American physician George Tiller who was nationally known for
being one of the few doctors in the United States to perform late-term
abortions, was shot and killed by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion
activist.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_George_Tiller>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
omnishambles:
(UK, chiefly politics) A situation that is bad or mismanaged in every
way.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/omnishambles>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves, letting
our personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their
full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own way
lift the level of humanity.
--Norman Vincent Peale
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale>