Ian O'Brien (born 3 March 1947) is a former breaststroke swimmer for Australia who won the 200 metre breaststroke at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in world record time. In 1962 at the age of 15 he competed in his first national championships, winning the 220 yard breaststroke. At the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, he won both the 110 and 220 yd breaststroke and the 4 × 110 yd medley relay. He won both breaststroke events at the 1963 Australian Championships, repeating the feat for the next three years. After winning his gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, he added a bronze in the medley relay. O'Brien successfully defended both his breaststroke titles at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. He won five Commonwealth Games gold medals and claimed a total of nine individual and six relay titles at the Australian Championships. He retired from the sport at the age of 21, worked for 10 years as a television stagehand, and later launched a company that produced television documentaries. In 1986 he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_O%27Brien
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1861:
The Emancipation Manifesto of Tsar Alexander II was proclaimed, abolishing serfdom in Imperial Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_reform_of_1861
1875:
The first indoor game of ice hockey was played at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal by James Creighton and McGill University students. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_indoor_hockey_game
1913:
Thousands of women marched in Washington, D.C. (program pictured) "in a spirit of protest" against the exclusion of women from American society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_suffrage_parade_of_1913
1943:
Second World War: During a German aerial attack on London, 173 people were killed in a stampede while trying to enter Bethnal Green tube station, which was being used as an air-raid shelter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethnal_Green_tube_station
1972:
Jethro Tull released Thick as a Brick, a concept album supposedly written by an 8-year-old boy, Gerald Bostock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thick_as_a_Brick
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
Rhodanian: Of, or aboriginal to, the Rhône valley. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Rhodanian
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer. --William Godwin https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Godwin