With the end of both WCW and ECW, WWF was standing on top of the wrestling business, with no competition. After WrestleMania X-Seven, several WCW and ECW wrestlers began appearing on WWF programming, and were depicted as invaders that tried to take over the promotion. They were called The Alliance and were led by Vince…
Cicadas can be found in thousands of different species around the world, and they usually emerge once a year. However, the Magicicada genus of eastern North America is unique, as its species follow a periodical cycle, emerging either every 13 or 17 years. The members of the Magicicada genus spend 99.5% of their lives underground…
After the boom of the 1980s, both WWF and WCW started to decline. WWF was hit with a steroid scandal that saw many of the major stars of the promotion involved. WWF physician Dr. George T. Zahorian was accused of distributing the drugs, and McMahon was also indicted due to his connection with him. The…
While various wrestling promotions were enjoying a moderate degree of success in the early 1980s, the territory system of the NWA would soon be disrupted by the national expansion of WWF. Vincent K. McMahon (better known as Vince McMahon), son of Vincent J. McMahon, bought WWF from his father in 1982. He immediately withdrew the…
Centuries before ruling over the entire Mediterranean region, Rome was just a small village located on a group of hills along the Tiber river in Lazio, Central Italy. The Romans had a series of myths surrounding the founding of the city, and traditionally dated the event on April 21, 753 BCE, although different dates were…
In the 1930s and 1940s, there were several small wrestling (henceforth “wrestling” will always refer to professional wrestling) promotions all over the United States, competing with each other to get the best talent and win over the fans in different cities. Several promoters came together in 1948 to form a loose confederation called National Wrestling…
Wrestling as a competitive sport has ancient origins, with evidence of mock combat between men dating back to prehistory. The modern sport of wrestling developed during the 19th century in two forms, freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, now collectively known as amateur wrestling. Meanwhile, during the 1830s, showmen in France started to present wrestlers as superhuman…
Professional wrestling is a unique blend of sports and theater, athleticism and entertainment, in which larger than life characters face each other in staged and dramatized matches, under the pretense of actual competition, creating a form of suspension of disbelief similar to that employed with works of fiction. While now professional wrestling is a global…
All over the world, April 1 is a day in which pranks and hoaxes are common, a custom known as April Fools’ Day. While this celebration only originated in modern times in the Western world, similar customs can be found since ancient times, mostly in Europe. Maybe the oldest instance of a similar tradition is…
Today the Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are the most widely used symbols for writing numbers, adopted by most countries around the world. These numbers derive from a system originally developed in India, and later introduced to Europe by Arabs starting in the 10th century. The Arabic numerals…