William Cummings (athlete)
William J. Cummings (June 10, 1858–July 13, 1919) was a Scottish professional runner who held the record for the mile in the 19th century and is perhaps best remembered for a series of races against Walter George, a top amateur runner who turned professional in part to challenge Cummings.
Read more about William Cummings (athlete): Early Professional Career, The 1885 Challenge Mile, The 1886 Challenge Mile
Famous quotes containing the words william and/or cummings:
“The Heavens. Once an object of superstition, awe and fear. Now a vast region for growing knowledge. The distance of Venus, the atmosphere of Mars, the size of Jupiter, and the speed of Mercury. All this and more we know. But their greatest mystery the heavens have kept a secret. What sort of life, if any, inhabits these other planets? Human life, like ours? Or life extremely lower in the scale. Or dangerously higher.”
—Richard Blake, and William Cameron Menzies. Narrator, Invaders from Mars, at the opening of the movie (1953)
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)