LS HIDDEN HISTORICA
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This 20thcentury lady dallied away her time writing modernist novels
What is the most unusual sport to be included in an Olympic programme?
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Arguably the most unusual element of any summer Olympic Games programme was sport-related art, defined by the categories of painting, sculpture, literature, music and architecture. Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Games, believed that intellectual development was as important as athletic endeavour, and had himself won gold for literature in the 1912 games. As a spectator sport, however, painting and architecture never worked and, since medals were last awarded in 1948, the Olympic movement has preferred to focus upon more clearly defined sports, such as athletics, cycling and swimming, keeping art in parallel exhibition, rather than integral competition. MR
GAME CHANGER The founder of the modern Games, Baron de Coubertin, introduced art as a sport
LENGTHY CAREER Smoot recreates the moment on the bridge almost 50 years later
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Another bizarre unit measurement is the by beard-second, defined ws the length facial hair gro in one second – approximately five nanometres.
Answers: Hidden Historicals Verge Inn Ear Wolf (Virginia Woolf) What is it? An Ancient Egyptian tool used in the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, which allowed the dead to speak in the afterlife.
Oliver Smoot measures five feet seven inches in height. In 1958, Smoot’s freshman year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he lent his name to a tongue-in-cheek unit of measurement. A group of MIT students wanted to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge, and Smoot was chosen because he was the shortest member of the team. He laid down, end over end, while his colleagues painted the units onto the side of the bridge. Perhaps it was his unique contribution to the science of measurement that led Oliver Smoot to become president of the Organization for Standardization and, for many years, serve as chairman of the American National Standards Institute. The smoot remains a ‘valid’ unit of measurement, it’s one of the options available on Google Earth, and the markings on the bridge are repainted every year. For the record, Harvard Bridge measures precisely 364.4 smoots and one ear. SL
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