Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 31, 2013

The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports held near Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. They probably began in 1612, and have continued on and off since (1636 depiction shown). They were started by a local lawyer, Robert Dover, with the approval of King James. Events included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords, and wrestling. By the time of James's death in 1625, many Puritan landowners had forbidden their workers to attend, and the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 brought the Games to an end. Revived after the Restoration of 1660, they gradually degenerated into a drunk and disorderly country festival. They ended again in 1852, when the common land on which they had been staged was partitioned and enclosed. Since 1966 the Games have been held each year on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday. Events have included the tug of war, gymkhana, shin-kicking, dwile flonking, motor cycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, and morris dancing. The British Olympic Association has recognised the Cotswold Olimpick Games as "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings". (Full article...)

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