POSTED: September 17th 2009

InDepth

This day in the world of sport . . .

THIS DAY (SEPTEMBER 17) MARKS THE . . . 21st anniversary, from 1988, of the Opening Ceremony at the Olympic Games in Seoul, the first to be hosted in South Korea. In other sports, this day in 1939 saw the first use of numbers on the backs of players shirts in Italy by order of the football federation “to assist the public in enjoying the spectacle by identifying the players.” In 1958, French centre-forward Just Fontaine scored four goals for French champions Reims away to Ards in the European Cup. Less than three months earlier Fontaine had a set a record (which still stands) with his 13 goals at the World Cup finals. In 2004, the controversial baseball star Barry Bonds (San Francisco Giants) hit his 700th home run. WORLD EVENTS – 1930: Start of construction of the Boulder (now Hoover) Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border. 1940: London Underground employs its first women staff, as porters and ticket collectors. 1986: Death of British TV soap opera star Pat Phoenix (‘Elsie Tanner’ in Coronation Street).

Keywords · 1988 Olympic Games · Seoul · Hoover Dam · London Underground · Pat Phoenix

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