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>
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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>
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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>
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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>
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