January 15, 2024
Coming in the house after staggering through the cold weather in mindless bliss today, I found time to look up what happened the day I was born, Saturday July 3, 1943. Don't ask me why. When you are reasonably retired part-time anyway, you have leisure hours to dream up such quests. So I turned to my subscription of Newspapers.com and dialed in that birthdate and lo and behold, three track stories showed up in my two local (Dayton, Ohio) newspapers The Journal Herald and The Dayton Daily News. The first was front page noting the visit of Lord Burghley of Chariots of Fire fame who came to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton on a mission for the British government dealing with procurement of aircraft parts. Burghley you may remember was the aristocratic teammate of Harold Abrahams in the film. He raced him around the quadrangle at Trinity College, Cambridge as mentioned in a recent post and repeated in more recent times by Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram. He would win the Olympic 400M Hurdles in 1928. Burghley according to the story below, represented his country on multiple boards and panels and was a member of Parliament much like Coe who worked his way up to lordship. Burghley may have been born into his peerage.
The second story covers the new world record in the mile 4:02.6 set in Stockholm by Arne Andersson. And the third covers the exploits of Gunder Hagg also a Swede. As Sweden was a relatively neutral country during WWII, there was food on the tables and the healthy young men were more or less able to follow their foolish pursuits such as middle distance running. But there were still a few Americans ready to race as noted in the Hagg article. However what I found interesting in the Andersson article is the fact that the writer is talking about the long awaited four minute mile which would take another 11 years to happen. So wrap yourself in those times past with these stories below. George Brose
Note: the paper misspelled 'Andersson' in the headline but got it right in the body of the story. ed.
Not to let slip by, another soon to be famous British visitor came to Dayton during the war.
Alan Turing who was the chief cryptographer in England working on the Enigma machine visited Dayton as well to collaborate with the National Cash Register Company codebreakers on their computer that was working on breaking the Japanese codes. Turing became famous for his work in the film The Imitation Game. He was also a runner of note, almost qualifying for the British Olympic team in 1948. He placed fourth in their marathon trials. But in life instead of being recognized for his service, he was condemned for his being a homosexual under the British morality laws.
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts. He accepted hormone treatment with DES, a procedure commonly referred to as chemical castration, as an alternative to prison. Turing died on 7 June 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as a suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. Following a public campaign in 2009, British prime minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the government for "the appalling way [Turing] was treated" wikipedia
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