SportFILE 009
The Marathon Won Barefoot
Abebe Bikila's shoes didn't fit. He ran the Olympic marathon without them — and won it, under a monument to fascism.
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Page 2
Back to latestHistoryFILE 008
The Pigeon That Saved 194 Men
Shot through the chest, blind in one eye, one leg hanging by a tendon — and still carrying the message that stopped the artillery.
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SportFILE 007
The Match That Took Three Days
Eleven hours and five minutes. 183 games. A final set that finished 70–68. Wimbledon's longest match broke its own scoreboard.
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MoviesFILE 006
The Shark That Didn't Work
Jaws has one of the most famous monsters in cinema history. It almost never appears on screen — because the monster was broken.
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HistoryFILE 005
The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.
In 1925 a con man gathered six scrap-metal dealers in a Paris hotel and sold them a national monument. Then he came back to try it again.
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SportFILE 004
The Night Amateurs Beat the Soviets
A team of American college students against the most dominant hockey team on earth. Everyone knew the score before it started. Everyone was wrong.
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MoviesFILE 003
Nobody Knew How Casablanca Ended
The cast of one of the most quoted films ever made did not know how it would finish. The ending was written while they were shooting it.
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HistoryFILE 002
Australia Declared War on Emus — and Lost
Two soldiers, two machine guns, ten thousand rounds of ammunition. The emus won.
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MoviesFILE 001
Star Wars Was Built From Junk
The lightsaber is a film projector. The blaster is a radio tower. Chewbacca is a walrus. The sounds of Star Wars came from a junkyard.
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