Bare Knuckles Boxing

Bare Knuckles Boxing For much of the 19th century boxing was not considered a legitimate sport in America. It was generally outlawed as a notorious crime, and boxing matches would be raided by the police and the participants arrested. Despite the official prohibitions against boxing matches, boxers often met in celebrated fights which drew large crowds and were openly reported in newspapers. And in the era before padded gloves became standard gear, the action in the bare-knuckle era was particularly brutal. Did You Know? Boxing was generally illegal in 19th century America, with fights held in secret locations.Bare-knuckle bouts were brutal, and could last for hours.Fighters could become famous, and some, peculiarly, picked up a political following.One bare-knuckles champion went on to serve in Congress. Despite the fame of some boxers, matches often tended to be scraps organized by neighborhood political bosses or outright gangsters. The fights could go on for hours, with opponents battering away at each other until one collapsed or was beaten insensible. While the contests involved punching, the action bore scant resemblance to modern boxing matches. The nature of the fighters was also different. As boxing was generally outlawed, there were no professional fighters. The pugilists tended to be otherwise employed. For instance, one noted bare-knuckles fighter in New York City, Bill Poole, was by trade a butcher, and was widely known as Bill the Butcher. (His life was very loosely adapted and portrayed in the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York.) Despite the notoriety and underground nature of bare knuckles fighting, some participants not only became famous, but were widely respected. Bill the Butcher, became a leader of the Know-Nothing Party in New York City before being assassinated. His funeral drew thousands of mourners, and was the largest public gathering in New York City until Abraham Lincolns funeral in April 1865. A perennial rival of Poole, John Morrissey, regularly found work as an election-day enforcer for New York City political factions. With what he earned boxing he opened saloons and gambling joints. His pugilistic reputation helped Morrissey to eventually be elected to Congress, representing a New York City district. John Morrissey during his bare knuckles boxing career. Library of Congress While serving on Capitol Hill, Morrissey became a popular figure. Visitors to Congress often wanted to meet the man known as Old Smoke, a nickname he picked up in a saloon fight when an opponent backed him up against a coal stove and set his clothes on fire. Morrissey, incidentally, proved he had enormous tolerance for pain when he won that particular fight. Later in the 19th century, when the boxer John L. Sullivan became popular, boxing became somewhat more legitimate. Still, the air of menace continued to surround boxing, and  major bouts were often held in peculiarly remote locations designed to skirt local laws. And publications like the Police Gazette, which focused on boxing events, seemed happy to make boxing seem shady. The London Rules Most boxing matches of the early 1800s were conducted under the London Rules, which were based on a set of rules laid down by an English boxer, Jack Broughton, in 1743. The basic premise of the Broughton Rules, and the subsequent London Prize Ring Rules, were that a round in a fight would last until a man went down. And there was a 30-second rest period between each round. Following the rest period, each fighter would have eight seconds to come to what was known as the scratch line in the middle of the ring. The fight would end when one of the fighters could not stand, or could not make it to the scratch line. Theoretically there was no limit to the number of rounds fought, so fights could go on for dozens of rounds. And because the fighters punched with bare hands, they could break their own hands by attempting knock-out punches to their opponents heads. So matches tended to be long battles of endurance. Marquess of Queensberry Rules A change in rules occurred in the 1860s in England. An aristocrat and sportsman, John Douglas, who held the title of the Marquess of Queensberry, developed a set of rules based on the use of padded gloves. The new rules came into use in the United States in the 1880s.

The Ups and Downs of Left and Right

The Ups and Downs of Left and Right The Ups and Downs of â€Å"Left† and â€Å"Right† The Ups and Downs of â€Å"Left† and â€Å"Right† By Mark Nichol Left has gotten a bad rap throughout history. Because of overwhelming majority of people are right-handed (most estimates are in the range of 85 to 90 percent), left-handedness has come to be associated with weakness the word left itself is descended from an Old English word meaning â€Å"weak.† Left-handedness was therefore until recently often seen as undesirable, and even well into the twentieth century, parents and teachers often forced left-handed children to use their right hand for writing, eating, and other basic activities. Even now, â€Å"a left-handed compliment† (also described as â€Å"a backhanded compliment†), refers to an ostensibly positive comment that is explicitly or implicitly an insult. Idioms that employ left to describe an undesirable or unusual situation include â€Å"two left feet,† referring to a clumsy dancer, and â€Å"out of left field,† meaning an unexpected comment or idea. (The latter, however, is not necessarily derogatory.) We also use left to refer to something that remains behind as a result of deliberate action or accidental oversight. Another common idiom with a negative connotation, one using this sense of left, is â€Å"left a lot to be desired.† The equivalents of left in other languages have similarly pejorative meanings. Gauche, the French word for left, also means â€Å"tactless, crude, socially inept† in English as well as French. The opposite, droit, is the root word of maladroit, which means â€Å"incompetent, inept, unsuitable.† (English has adopted and adapted that term as adroit literally, â€Å"to the right,† and meaning â€Å"appropriate† as well as maladroit.) Sinister, from the Latin word for â€Å"on the left,† came to be associated with inauspicious or unlucky events, and was borrowed by French and later English to mean â€Å"evil.† In heraldry, it refers to the right-hand side of a coat of arms (the left-hand side from the point of view of the bearer of a shield, from which the coat of arms derived), opposite the dexter, or right, side. From the Latin element dextr-, meaning â€Å"on the right,† borrowed into English as dexter, we also get the adjective dexterous, meaning â€Å"clever, skillful.† Right itself means â€Å"good, correct,† and that’s the originally connotation when referring to the right hand it’s the correct one to use. Among the many idioms suggesting the positive connotation are â€Å"right-hand man† and â€Å"the right stuff.† (The use of right and leftto refer to political ideology, each often capitalized when referring to adherents as a collective, came from the revolutionary era in France: The conservative party in the National Assembly called itself the Droit, the â€Å"right† party. The liberal faction, in opposition, came to be referred to as the â€Å"left.†) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Great Similes from Literature to Inspire YouPeace of Mind and A Piece of One's Mind5 Tips to Understand Hyphenated Words