Posts Tagged ‘Polo’
“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”*…
Those were the days…
Ah, polo, that sport of kings, where players race down the field atop horsepowered beasts. Behold their mallets and wheels, whirling throughout the chukka; inhale the earthy scent of mown grass, leather, and gasoline; listen to those bumping bodies, as the transmission’s planetary gearset reins in speed. You’re less likely to find this game played before Pimm’s-sipping crowds, however. It is auto polo — a short-lived sport thought to have been created as an advertising stunt to sell Ford Model Ts in 1911.
Invented, or at least popularized, by the Topeka car salesman Ralph “Pappy” Hankinson, auto polo quickly spread across the United States. Five thousand people supposedly attended the first round, played between the Red Devils and Gray Ghosts on an alfalfa field in Kansas. League matches popped up in the following years, and within a decade it was possible to spectate the sport at Madison Square Garden and Coney Island. Auto polo then went international. King George V enjoyed a match in England; French teams raced around the Place de la Concorde; and touring exhibitions introduced auto polo across continental Europe…
For more background (history, rules) and more photos (from a 1912 match held at Hilltop Park, New York): “Photographs of Auto Polo (ca. 1912),” in @PublicDomainRev.
See also: Bicycle Polo.
* Shakespeare, Hamlet
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As we muse on mallets, we might recall that it was on this date in 1889 that John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain for the bare-knuckle heavyweight title at a then-undisclosed location in Richburg, Mississippi, when Kilrain’s manager threw in the towel after the 75th (1 minute) round. This was the last official bare-knuckle title fight in history as boxing adopted the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, which mandated gloves.
Oh. My. God!…
This pretty little dress was most likely made for the ’72 television version of Emma. It was used again several years later on Mrs.Hurst in Pride and Prejudice. It is seen on in the background on an extra at a ball in Mansfield Park a few years later. Most recently it was seen in the mini-series John Adams in the episode “Unnecessary War.”
359 (so far) other illustrated examples at Recycled Movie Costumes.
As we look discretely over our shoulders, we might recall that Ralph Rueben Lifshitz was born in New York City on this date in 1939. Better known by his designer name, Ralph Lauren, he remade American wardrobes with lines like Chaps and Polo– and in the process, conjured a broad nostalgia for a “past” that he created, as it were, from whole cloth.
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