Origin
The marathon's creator asserts that the marathon's name honors a local legend about flying monkeys. According to the legend, the flying monkeys are an endangered cryptid often confused with large owls and hawks. Before 1939 the monkeys were supposedly commonly seen throughout the Southeastern United States, with large populations living in middle Tennessee and Appalachia. The legend states that, following 1939, the flying monkeys were hunted to the point of near-extinction.
Read more about this topic: Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)