History
| Happy Valley Racecourse | |||||||||||||||||
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| Westerly panorama of Happy Valley Racecourse | |||||||||||||||||
| Happy Valley Racecourse at night | |||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 快活谷馬場 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 跑馬地馬場 | ||||||||||||||||
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It was first built in 1845 to provide horse racing for the British people in Hong Kong. Before it was built, the area was a swampland, but also the only flat ground suitable for horse racing on Hong Kong Island. To make way for the racecourse, Hong Kong Government prohibited rice growing by villages in the surrounding area. The first race ran in December 1846. Over the years, horse racing became more and more popular among the Chinese residents.
On 26 February 1918, there was a fire and at least 590 people died. By the next day as many as 576 definite deaths were reported by the Hong Kong Telegraph. It was caused by the collapse of a temporary grandstand, which knocked over food stalls and set bamboo matting ablaze. It is a fire with one of the highest casualties in Hong Kong history.
The race track was rebuilt in 1995, and became a world-class horse racing facility.
Read more about this topic: Happy Valley Racecourse
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)