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>
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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>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
Rhodanian:
Of, or aboriginal to, the Rhône valley.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Rhodanian>
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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>
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