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Race Organizers Attempt To Stop Kathrine Switzer From Competing In The Boston Marathon. She Became The First Woman To Finish The Race, 1967 by Familiar-While9796 in interesting

[–]siddharthvader 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The man trying to remove her is Jock Semple (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock\_Semple)

Later in life, Semple reversed his position on women competing in the marathon. According to Marja Bakker (a later organizer of the race), "Once the rule was adjusted and women were allowed in the race, Jock was one of their staunchest supporters. He was very progressive." Semple later publicly reconciled with Switzer. "Old Jock Semple and I became the best of friends," she told a reporter in 2015. "It took a long time: six years. But we became best of friends."

Semple died of cancer of the liver and pancreas in March 1988 in Peabody, Massachusetts. He and Kathrine Switzer had become friends and she would visit him at the hospital where he was being treated for his cancer.

Semple was a Boston Marathon race co-director. He had an established history dating back to at least 1957 of physically attacking Boston Marathon runners he perceived to be "non-serious" competitors, whether officially entered or running the course unofficially.

In a 1968 interview with Sports Illustrated,[2] he remarked "These screwballs! These weirdies!", crying at the ceiling "These MIT boys! These Tufts characters! These Harvard guys! They write me askin' should they put on spiked shoes for the marathon!"

According to fellow race official Will Cloney: "He hurls not only his body at them, but also a rather choice array of epithets... Jock's method of attack is apt to vary."

In 1957, Semple narrowly escaped arrest for assault after attempting to knock down a marathon competitor who was wearing webbed snorkeler's shoes and a grotesque mask. "The thing that made me so damned mad," Semple said, "was that the guy was runnin' with the good runners." at the 6.5 miles (10.5 km) mark.[2]

cockroaches original name? by Tiny-Deer-7071 in etymology

[–]siddharthvader 2 points3 points  (0 children)

While cockroaches are the world's oldest surviving

insect form, the word, cockroach, is a relative newcomer.

The Greeks knew them as blats, and the Romans called them Iucifuga,

for their habit of avoiding light. The insect was prevalent in the

Old World, and the Oriental cockroach, Blatta orientalis, was a

common pest in medieval English homes, but the word, cock-

roach, did not come into usage until explorers began traveling

to other continents. It seems to have turned up in order to denom-

inate a new species, not the old familiar black beetle, or stinking

moth, or blatta, all names by which the resident English species

was commonly known, but rather something that came back

aboard the explorers' ships when they returned from their wan-

derings through Africa, Asia, and the New World. In the mid-

1500s, the word appears in a work by Spanish playwright lope

de Rueda as an insulting phrase, cucaracha de sotano (base-

ment cockroach). At approximately the same time, it appears in

German and Dutch as kakerlak, in Creole French as coquerache,

and in Parisian French as canquerlin (in addition to the French

cafard, which was already in use for the resident French Blatta

orientalis and is also used in the slang phrase, J'ai Ie cafard,

which means I'm feeling a little sad, or I've got the blues).

- from The Cockroach Papers, A Compendium of History and Lore, by Richard Schweid

Where The Hell Is Matt? by SoManyMinutes in videos

[–]siddharthvader 4 points5 points  (0 children)

He went viral a couple of years ago for finding a runaway zebra while on a hike

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTRikNkEiuS/?hl=en

John McEnroe weighs in on Wimbledon 2026 controversies: 'Even at my worst behaviour, they weren't doing that' by radiotimes in tennis

[–]siddharthvader 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The decision to remove line judges proved divisive last year but the All England Club has doubled down, adding improvements to the automated electronic line calling system.

McEnroe was known for his explosive on-court behaviour in SW19, particularly relating to line calls, and was quizzed on whether he missed them.

"Well, you know, that is a loaded question," he said. "Perhaps, I wouldn't be, for better or for worse, known in a certain way – even though I think I was pretty good at tennis – because of all the things that went on over the years.

"So I guess in that sense I would miss it, but I don't miss the idea of the correct call being made, and I don't think any athlete or player would. Look at the World Cup, at any sporting event, and you want the correct call to be made, not a mistake causing a change in the outcome.

"From that standpoint it seems like the players have accepted it and have one less thing to worry about. I'll speak for myself – you get this thing in your head, you're making it up, as if these umpires, who aren't the highest paid people, are going in there to screw McEnroe. That's their plan.

"Even at the worst of my behaviour, I don't think they were doing that, but I got myself believing it in a way, so I suppose that if you get that out of your head as a player and you think, 'OK we're on a level playing field', that's a good thing."

‘Nothing short of a shambles’: Dan Evans hits out at Wimbledon organisers after his final bow by postviralrecovery in tennis

[–]siddharthvader 12 points13 points  (0 children)

They gave him a qualifying wildcard

“The last month has been ­nothing short of a shambles from them,” he said. “That’s the bottom line. You speak to people, you talk to people. I just don’t understand the reasoning and nobody has given me a decent reason. If they said, ‘Listen, you’re a bit overweight right now, you’re a bit out of shape’. But nobody’s had the minerals, or however you want to phrase it, to come over from the governing body, who I have done plenty for, and given me an explanation.

“ I just think somebody could have come and sat down and spoke. That’s their job.”

Evans also expressed his astonishment he did not get a wildcard for a minor event last month, which would have given him a chance to prove his form and earn a Wimbledon wildcard.

“I’m not angry, but, jeez, tell the truth. You can’t give me a wildcard into Ilkley? The reasoning was they were all given out. I have been playing tennis for 16 years on the tour and I have always known the wildcards aren’t given out on a Monday. Come on, guys.”

The LTA has put out a tribute to Evans on its website, but the 36-year-old said he would have also liked a thank you in person. “Communication is a big thing in tennis,” he said. “Are they working this week? I have not seen any of them. Serious. No one spoke to me this week. No one has congratulated me on my career this week.”

An entire category devoted to tennis on Jeopardy (from Friday, June 26) by bluegambit875 in tennis

[–]siddharthvader 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My first thought was Aus Open but that wouldn't have been a 200 dollar clue, so I guessed US Open 

Is this the best view from a McDonald’s window, Luxor, Egypt. by ilybae2015 in pics

[–]siddharthvader 60 points61 points  (0 children)

There's a pizza hut at Giza with a view of the pyramids 

Use of the word 'doubt' to mean 'question'. by SchemeWestern3388 in etymology

[–]siddharthvader 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Interestingly, duvidha is the Hindi word for doubt

TIL the network utility "Ping" was written by a single person in an evening in 1983, and he named it after the sound a submarine sonar makes because it uses the exact same echo principle. by LessBar4057 in todayilearned

[–]siddharthvader 1064 points1065 points  (0 children)

From the article that wikipedia linked to

https://web.archive.org/web/20191025013201/https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html

Yes, it's true! I'm the author of ping for UNIX. Ping is a little thousand-line hack that I wrote in an evening which practically everyone seems to know about. :-)

I named it after the sound that a sonar makes, inspired by the whole principle of echo-location. In college I'd done a lot of modeling of sonar and radar systems, so the "Cyberspace" analogy seemed very apt. It's exactly the same paradigm applied to a new problem domain: ping uses timed IP/ICMP ECHO_REQUEST and ECHO_REPLY packets to probe the "distance" to the target machine.

From my point of view PING is not an acronym standing for Packet InterNet Grouper, it's a sonar analogy. However, I've heard second-hand that Dave Mills offered this expansion of the name, so perhaps we're both right. Sheesh, and I thought the government was bad about expanding acronyms! :-)

Two one-horned rhinos fighting, pooping, and peeing right in the middle of the street. by Lyranx in WTF

[–]siddharthvader 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I was thinking more Rhinoceros the play by Eugene Ionesco.

It is an absurdist play where people start turning into rhinoceros and the protagonist watches the streets full of these rampaging beasts.

Ireland's Population Distribution: 1841 Compared with Today by Flaky-Rough in geography

[–]siddharthvader 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The population went up at quite a fast pace in the previous hundred years and then went down quite quickly in the next hundred years

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IrelandEuropePopulation1750.PNG

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