Remembering the four-minute mile

 When I was in high school, and a sports fan, there was periodic speculation about whether or not the mile could be run in under four minutes. Track stars were trying but always failed.

Then in 1954 a miler named Roger Bannister took to a track in Oxford, England, and the rest is history.

This Day In History tells the story:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-four-minute-mile

This sort of thing -- folks believing "it can't happen" -- occurs all the time. When I was managing editor of Oregon Business Magazine in the 1980s, we published a special issue addressing the question, "Will the Dow Jones Average ever break 1000?" (Today the Dow was almost 39,000! By June, 2022, 1755 milers had broken 4 minutes.)

Remarkably enough, online I found a film of the event -- narrated by Bannister himself!

https://youtu.be/wTXoTnp_5sI?si=PBdrv3ezkEfCP-SA

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