The 1980 Zimbabwe women's national field hockey team won the gold medal at that year's Summer Olympics in Moscow in the Soviet Union. The 16 teammates, all from Zimbabwe's white minority, were assembled less than a month before the Olympics, after an American-led boycott reduced the number of teams competing. It was the first time the women's field hockey event had been held at the Olympics. After beating Poland and the Soviet Union and drawing with Czechoslovakia and India, the Zimbabweans secured the gold on the final day with a 4–1 victory over Austria. Their victory was considered a huge upset, particularly considering the short time the team had to prepare. Won at a time of great transition in Zimbabwe (formerly as Rhodesia, the country had been barred from the previous three Olympics, and only in April 1980 had Zimbabwe achieved international recognition of its independence), the gold medal was the nation's first Olympic medal of any colour. The players were dubbed the "Golden Girls" by the Zimbabwean press and were briefly national celebrities. Zimbabwe did not win another Olympic medal until 2004. (Full article...)
... that Kenny Booker as a basketball player helped UCLA win its fifth-straight national championship, and as a coach the next year led Verbum Dei to its fourth consecutive title?
... that eight months after launch, d-CON was selling US$100,000-worth of rat poison per week, a feat that was called "as brilliant a record for a new product as you're likely to find anywhere, anytime"?
Chandiroor Divakaran (b. 1946) is a Malayalam–language poet and folk song writer from Kerala, India. He has published numerous collections of poetry since his debut collection, Radha, in 1965.
