Larry Bird was initially recruited, out of high school, to play basketball for coach Bobby Knight at Indiana University. However, Bird, who was from the small town of French Lick, Indiana, felt uncomfortable at the big campus, and dropped out after a month.
He eventually enrolled at the smaller Indiana State University; as a senior, he led the Sycamores basketball team to an undefeated regular season, and the 1979 NCAA championship game, against Michigan State, where he and ISU lost to Magic Johnson and the Spartans, beginning a rivalry between the two players which endured through their NBA careers.
1972 was the first year the US Olympic Basketball team was the first one not to win the gold medal. The Soviets were given numerous opportunities to run a last play and and there were numerous rules violations allowed until ultimately the Soviets won with a last-second shot. In protest the members of the US basketball team have, to this day, refused to accept their silver medals.
In the spring of 1978, both Bird and Johnson were selected to represent the U.S. in the USA Men’s World Invitational Tournament, a made-for-TV round-robin tournament featuring teams from the United States, Yugoslavia, Russia, and Cuba. They shared floor-time together, and afterwards each remarked separately to the press how impressive they found the other’s play.
In the 2023 FIBA World Cup (of basketball), South Sudan finished with a record of 3-2, earning Africa’s slot at the 2024 Summer Olympics, and clinching the nation’s first appearance in the Olympics, full stop. South Sudan has only been an independent country since 2011.
The head of state of an Olympic’s host country typically ceremonially opens the games with a few words, but by tradition does not otherwise make a speech. This was the custom followed by Adolf Hitler in Berlin in 1936, Ronald Reagan in L.A. in 1984 and Queen Elizabeth II in London in 2012.
Businessman Peter Ueberroth was the chairman of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, which led the organization of the 1984 Summer Olympics in that city. As a result of the success of those Games, Ueberroth was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1984; he became the commissioner of Major League Baseball just weeks after the conclusion of the Los Angeles Games.
Anne Mountbatten-Windsor did not have to take a gender test when she participated in the Montreal Olympics in 1976, the only contestant who was exempted from the requirement.
The surname “Mountbatten-Windsor” is used by royal family members when a surname is required. As an example: Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, used the name when filing a French lawsuit related to the topless pictures of his wife published by the French magazine Closer.
“Oxbridge” is a portmanteau of “Oxford” and “Cambridge,” the names of the two oldest and most prestigious universities in England. The word, which appears to have been coined by author William Makepeace Thackeray in 1850, is now used to refer to the two universities collectively, as well as to characteristics reminiscent of them.
The ‘Oxford comma’, sometimes referred to as the ‘serial comma’, is a comma placed immediately after the second-last item in a series, usually preceding the ‘and’ in that series. For example, in the phrase “Please bring milk, eggs, and bread”, the Oxford comma immediately follows ‘eggs’. In this example, it’s optional, as “Please bring milk, eggs and bread” is also grammatically correct.
In other phrases, however, the absence of the Oxford comma can lead to ambiguity. In the phrase “I live with my parents, Fred and Ethel”, one might infer that the writer lives with his parents whose names are Fred and Ethel, but one might also infer that the writer lives with four people: his parents, Fred, and Ethel.
& representing “and” used to be the 27th letter in the alphabet and is called the ampersand. It is a combined and stylized ‘et’ which is Latin for “and”.
Until the 1800s, the ampersand was considered the 27th character of the alphabet, coming after Z. For example, the Apple Pie Alphabet, a children’s rhyme, includes it, starting with “A was an apple pie, B bit it, C cut it” and ending with “X, Y, Z, and ampersand, All wished for a piece in hand”.
I wish I had that as my fact.
In play: The ampersand used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet. It is a ligature of ‘e’ and ‘t’ and could be seen as a graffito on a wall in Pompeii.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago currently has an exhibit on the volcanic disaster which overcame Pompeii in 79 AD, and archeological research since then. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the ruins of Pompeii were not found again until 1740.
In the first season of Marvel’s Loki, a Disney+ exclusive, Loki and Mobius are tasked with discovering where the Loki-variant (later revealed to be known as Sophie) is hanging out.
Loki comes to the conclusion that she can hide out indefinitely by going to various apocalypses throughout history, which will go unnoticed by the Time Variance Authority’s technology because everything is going to be wiped out in a few minutes anyway. He proves his theory by taking Mobius to the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii, and freeing some goats and making a little harmless mayhem.
A Möbius strip (also known as a Möbius loop) is a non-orientable surface, which can be formed by taking a strip of paper, and taping the two ends together while incorporating a half-twist into the strip.
The Möbius strip was first defined mathematically by August Möbius and Johann Listing in 1858, though the shape has been known for far longer, having appeared in Roman mosaics from the 3rd Century CE.
The Möbius function µ(n) gives a value based on the prime factorization of a number. It evaluates to +1 if the number has an even number of prime factors with none of the factors to the power of 2 or higher, -1 if the number has an odd number of prime factors with none of the factors to the power of 2 or higher and 0 if any of the prime factors are raised to the power of 2 or higher.
In 3-dimensional Euclidean space, the Möbius strip also has only one edge to it (construct one, then use a highliter or felt-tip marker and trace along the edge to prove it to yourself).
