Ray norton 1928

Norton Jr. The arson ring was blamed for setting some fires in eastern Massachusetts between and Officials said members of the group, who often cheered as they watched buildings burn, were motivated by a mistaken belief that the fires would force local governments to hire more firefighters after widespread layoffs in the early s. Norton, a Boston firefighter for 14 years and one of two members of the ring who did not plead guilty, was convicted by a federal jury Feb.

Not that the Roman sun did not shine brightly on any United States competitors. The American hero of the games turned out to be a heroine—African-American sprinter Wilma Rudolph who captured gold medals in the and meters and also the 4 x meter relay. Rudolph's starring role was inconvenient for the then often contemptuous prevailing American perspective on women's sports - that they were unimportant adjuncts to the men's competition and unfairly served to bulk up Soviet medal counts to the detriment of the US.

Rudolph's success on the track also prefigured the civil rights and women's revolutions that would be the most enduring legacy of the s. And her back story—that of a sickly premature baby who wore a leg brace as a child as a result of polio, double pneumonia and scarlet fever—set the template for the human interest soap opera approach to Olympic athletes that would come to define the way in which American television covered the games in the future.

By the time the Rome games ended, American fortunes in men's track and field had recouped somewhat, but it was the American setbacks during the first week that resonated the most—defeats and disappointments that meshed perfectly with Kennedy's successful campaign theme of a once-mighty America that was losing ground in the contest for the global preeminence that many Americans claimed as a birthright.

It turned out to be very close election. Did Ray Norton's errant baton pass make the difference? Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. Henry D. Fetter: U. The United States failed to win events which it had monopolized for decades.

View All. World Events 8. Age 1. Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Age 2. On December 2, , Enrico Fermi and a small band of scientists and engineers demonstrated that a simple construction of graphite bricks and uranium lumps could produce controlled heat.

The space chosen for the first nuclear fission reactor was a squash court under the football stadium at the University of Chicago. Age With the construction of 41, miles of the Interstate Highway System, the Federal Aid Highway Act made way for the largest public works project in American history at that time.