The “Birkie” started in 1973 as a cross-country ski race from Hayward, Wisconsin, to the neighboring town of Cable, with only 35 skiers competing. Now it is the largest and most prestigious cross-country ski race in North America and attracts top skiers from all over the world. Other races held during the three-day festival include the Barnebirkie (for children) and the 10K Family Fun Ski. The American Birkebeiner is part of the Worldloppet, an international series of marathon races, and was patterned after the Birkebeiner Rennet in Lillehammer, Norway. Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
Riggs began playing tennis at the age of 11, won Wimbledon when he was 21, and became one of the top-rated male tennis players of the 1940s. He retired in the early 1950s and was largely forgotten until 1973, when he proclaimed men superior to women in athletics and came out of retirement to challenge two of the top female tennis players in the world. After beating Margaret Court, he played Billie Jean King in one of the most famous tennis events of all time, “The Battle of the Sexes.” Who won? 
Read was an Australian criminal and author. He committed numerous crimes, including armed robbery, assault, and kidnapping and spent only 13 months outside of jail between the ages of 20 and 38. He used his criminal and prison exploits as fodder for a bestselling series of true-crime books. In them, he tells of attacking a judge, robbing drug dealers, torturing members of the criminal underworld, and starting a prison war. What children’s book written by Read was the target of an attempted ban? 
The term National Socialist—or Nazi, for short—was added to the name of the German Workers’ Party the year after it was founded. On the day it was renamed, swiftly-rising new member Adolf Hitler outlined the party’s official platform before 2,000 people, its largest audience yet. During the Great Depression, millions of jobless voters joined the party, and in 1932 it became the largest bloc in the Reichstag. How did Hitler manage to make it the only political party in Germany? 
Legend says that on this night Lord 
Wagner was an American baseball player who led the National League in batting eight times. He entered the majors in 1897, and played for Pittsburgh most of his career. Though massively built, he was agile, leading his league in stolen bases five times and scoring almost 1,800 runs. He retired in 1917 but returned to coach the Pirates for almost two decades. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1936. Fans called him “The Flying Dutchman” for his speed, but he had another nickname. What was it? 
A combination of the words “smoke” and “fog,” smog is a kind of air pollution that plagues cities throughout the world. Smog can form in almost any climate but is worse during periods of warm, sunny weather, when it can build up to dangerous levels and cause a number of health problems. It has even led to acute incidents in which thousands of people in a single metropolitan area have been killed. In what city did the Great Smog of 1952 kill approximately 4,000 people over a four-day period?