The 1936 Olympics was meant to be a display of Aryan supremacy.
A grandson of slaves won 4 gold medals to dispel the myth in Hitler's den.
In his country, he still couldn't ride in the front of the bus.
Jesse Owens, one of the greatest Olympians, was born on this day in 1913!
At nine his family moved to Cleveland.
When a teacher asked his name, he answered, "J.C.," which stood for James Cleveland.
The teacher misunderstood his Southern accent as 'Jesse' and the name struck.
When Jesse Owens reached Germany for the 1936 Olympics, another Adolf, Mr. Dassler, drove to the Olympic village and persuaded him to try out his shoes.
The success that ensued greatly increased his sales.
It was not until 1949 that Dassler would name his brand @adidas.
It was a German named Luz Long who suggested Jesse Owens to make a mark several inches before the takeoff board and jump from there to play it safe. This helped in his qualification, ultimately leading to a Gold.
He never saw Long again as the latter was killed in World War II.
Jesse Owens received no congratulatory telegram.
He lamented how there was no invitation to the White House to shake hands with the President.
One of the greatest athletes of all time had to use the freight lift to attend a reception in his honour at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Jesse Owens was reduced to penury due to the lack of job opportunities. The hugely successful athlete had to resort to racing against horses to pay his bills.
A few years later, with the post-war boom in US, he accepted corporate jobs and made a living as a motivational speaker.
In a 1950 Associated Press poll, Jesse Owens was voted the greatest track and field star for the first half of century.
In 1976, President Ford presented him with the Medal of Freedom.
He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bush in 1990.
In the latter phase of his life, he saw the Civil Rights movement unfold.
His performance was not equaled until another African-American Carl Lewis won four gold medals in the same events at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
James Cleveland Owens was quite ahead of his time!
Since you are here, ProQuizzin League is India's first franchise-based quiz sports league.
On this day in 1869, #MahatmaGandhi was born in Porbandar, Gujarat.
In 1982, Richard Attenborough's film 'Gandhi' raked in eight Oscars. The film had an ensemble cast and crew, even in lesser roles. Many were already famous and many became legends in the years to come.
THREAD:
In 1962, Motilal Kothari, while working for the Indian High Commission in London, asked Richard Attenborough whether he would direct a film on Gandhi. He got Mountbatten to have a word with Jawaharlal Nehru who agreed with the script. The film is dedicated to all three of them.
Nehru's choice for the role of Gandhi was Alec Guinness. Peter Finch, Harvey Finney, Anthony Hopkins and even Dustin Hoffman were considered at one point of time. The role finally went to a certain Krishna Pandit Bhanji. Ben Kingsley, as he was better known, won an Oscar for it.
#OnThisDay in 1962, 'Silent Spring', one of the most influential books of all time, was published. It takes its title from the ruinous imagery of John Keats' 1819 ballad 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'.
A Thread:
By the early 1960s, Rachel Carson was not an unknown author. Having trained as a biologist, she joined the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1951, she published 'The Sea Around Us' which was a bestseller.
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She would spend much of the next ten years focussing on harmful effects of pesticides and this is how she came across a newfound antagonist.
DDT had been around for quite some time. During the days of World War II, it was used to treat malaria.
September 26, 1983. Stanislav Petrov, a lt. colonel in the Soviet Strategic Air Defence Forces, stations himself as the duty officer at the command centre of Oko, a brand new early warning system built to detect any nuclear attack from the US.
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It's half past midnight. All of a sudden, the warning light comes on. A siren starts screaming. This means a missile has been launched from US. A second warning light appears and the siren screams of another missile. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. The writing is on the wall.
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Everyone in the room freezes for a while. Petrov finds himself in a dilemma. He has clear orders, i.e., pick up the phone and order an appropriate response. The window of reaction is so small that if a split second passes, there might not be any missile bases left in USSR.
Last week we added 13 questions from each of the 13 editions of the Indian Premier League, at #IndiaGyanKaBhandar to make #IndiaKnowledgeKaSuperpower.
The D-Day has come. As the nation gears up for the first match of #IPL2020, let's take a look at the answers of those questions:
2008
Which cricketer was CSK’s preferred choice for the role of skipper whose decision to represent the city he was brought up ultimately resulted in MS Dhoni being roped in as the most expensive player in the inaugural edition?
@Bazmccullum scored a mammoth unbeaten 158 runs in the very first match of the tournament. However, who was the first Indian to score a century in IPL?
Answer: @im_manishpandey, then 19-year old, while playing for RCB against Deccan Chargers.
Rome won the bid to host the 1908 Olympics. London took over hosting duties as the Italian government had to divert funds to the reconstruction of the city of Naples. The obstacle: Mt. Vesuvius erupted in April 1906. For Italians, April truly turned out to be the cruellest month.
The New York Times noted that the Neapolitans were rather glad. They said the eruption of Vesuvius was in preparation for the arrival of King Edward, who left Marseilles on April 3 on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, accompanied by Queen Alexandra and were due a visit.
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The King and Queen did indeed visit Naples while the clean up operation was underway and later made a cash donation to aid recovery.
However, Queen Alexandra's tryst with Italy and the Olympics did not end here.
From an unresolved mystery at a hotel in Mussoorie inspiring her debut novel to the adaptation of her long running play 'The Mousetrap', let us navigate through the many Indian connections of the Queen of Crime!
Summer of 1911: Frances Garnett-Orme, a British spiritualist, arrived at Mussoorie's Savoy. She was followed by another spiritualist, E. Mountstephen. One day, while Eva had gone to Lucknow, Frances was found dead, with traces of poison. Eva went scot-free due to lack of evidence
The case intrigued the British populace in India and it reached Rudyard Kipling who sent the details of the mystery to his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The facts of the case were passed on to Agatha Christie and the case was fictionalized into 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles'.