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Showing posts with the label 1914

Edward Gardner (1898-1966)

Edward Gardner was born in Birmingham, Alabama in December 1898. Shortly after his birth, his family moved west and eventually settled in Seattle. Gardner returned to Alabama in 1914, to attend Tuskegee Institute, where he learned a trade as a steam engineer and became a star on the school’s track team. By 1921, Gardner was living in Seattle and began competing in the annual Ten Mile Washington State Championship, sponsored by the  Seattle Post Intelligencer .  Gardner won the race three times from 1921-1927, setting course records as he went and beating the best amateur and military runners in the Pacific Northwest.  As he trained, he adopted his trademark outfit, a white towel tied around his head, a white sleeveless shirt and white trunks.  His Seattle fans would call out “oh you Sheik.” The name stuck and Eddie Gardner became known as "the Sheik” of Seattle. In 1928, Gardner entered the first foot race across America, nicknamed the “bunion derby” (A 3,400 m...

Joe "The Brown Bomber" Louis

Birth Name: Joe Barrow Birth:  May 13, 1914 Lafayette Chambers County Alabama, USA Death:  Apr. 12, 1981 Paradise Clark County Nevada, USA Widely considered one of the greatest and most beloved boxers in the sport's history, Joseph Louis Barrow was born May 13, 1914 in the cotton-field country near Lafayette, Alabama. The son of a sharecropper, and the great-grandson of a slave, he was eighth child of Munn and Lilly Barrow. Louis's family life was shaped by financial struggle. The Louis kids slept three to a bed and Louis' father was committed to a state hospital when he was just two years old. Louis had little schooling and as a teen took on odd jobs in order to help out his mother and siblings. The family eventually relocated to Detroit where Louis found work as a laborer at the River Rouge Plant of the Ford Motor Company. For a time Louis set his sights on a career in cabinet making....

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson to receive the National Academy of Sciences’ most prestigious honor By  Rachel Feltman The National Academy of Sciences has announced that Neil deGrasse Tyson, most widely known for hosting the recent reboot of Carl Sagan’s popular science show “Cosmos,” will receive their most prestigious award at a ceremony this April. The Public Welfare Medal  was first presented in 1914 (when it went to two men integral to the Panama Canal building project) and is intended to  recognize those who work to promote science for the benefit of humanity . Tyson will be the first person to receive the award for his efforts in science communication to the general public since Sagan himself won in 1994. The two men are connected by more than their shared awards and TV styles: Back when Tyson was a high school student in the Bronx considering colleges, Sagan  wrote him a heartfelt invitation  to visit his lab at Cornell — one that Tyson accepted. He ende...