by Samantha Kessler
Modern Mythology, Period 5
At no place and no time is our human sense of self and world view changed in such a dramatic way as when ordinary men and women prove, with deeds of strength, endurance and great courage, that we are capable of far more than what we seem. Many of these great deeds take place within the organized world of sports, but sometimes they happen in far corners of the globe. So, I submit the following five events that took place in the last fifty years and left our world different than it was before:
In 1947, Jackie Robinson signed a contract to play Major League Baseball. Besides a very respectable set of averages for hitting and fielding, he showed amazing courage every time he stepped onto the field, because he was black. For the first time in history, a black man was playing baseball on the same field as white men. It was a turning point not only for the sport, but also for the Civil Rights movement as a whole.
Climbing Mt. Everest - in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary became the first man on record to scale to the very top of the tallest peak on earth. When asked why he did such a crazy, not to mention, dangerous thing, he supposedly answered "because it was there." In 1975, Mrs. Junko Tabei became the first woman to climb to the summit. She was the 36th person to do so.
The 4-minute mile - In 1954, Roger Bannister ran a mile in three minutes and 59.4 seconds. Before he did it, it was thought to be an impossible thing. The human body simply wasn't supposed to be able to run that fast, over that great a distance. Today, a 4-minute mile is considered a difficult, but attainable athletic goal.
The "Battle of the Sexes" - in 1973, tennis champions Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs played a three-set singles match, to prove once and for all whether women could play tennis as well as men. Billie Jean wiped up the court with Bobby, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Along with many other women pioneers in sports, Billie Jean proved you don't have to have testosterone to achieve great things.
In 1983, a British fellow named George Meegan took a Sunday stroll. He started in Tierra Del Fuego, and barely stopped for food and sleep until he reached Alaska. That 19,000 mile walk set a new world's record for distance walking. When we set our mind to it, there's no limit to how far we can go.