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bet that Lincoln would lose, and of course he lost the bet. in 1860, he made a bet with a friend on the presidential election. a door-to-door bookseller from Providence, R.I.
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was one of the most famous pedestrians of the 19th century. On champion pedestrian Edward Payson Weston And so people went to see celebrities and see the spectacle, not just to watch the people walk. There were a lot of celebrities who attended the matches: James Blaine, the senator from Maine, was a fan. There were brass bands playing songs there were vendors selling pickled eggs and roasted chestnuts. So beginning right after midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning, the walkers would set off and they would just keep walking until right up until midnight the following Saturday.īut people didn't go just to watch the people walk. And you could only walk six days because public amusements were prohibited on Sundays. They would just map out a dirt track on the floor of an arena - many of the matches took place at the first Madison Square Garden in New York - and the lap was about 1/7th or 1/8th of a mile. six-day walking matches, the rules were pretty simple. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. But generally, for 21 hours a day, they were in motion walking around the track."Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Pedestrianism Subtitle When Watching People Walk Was America's Favorite Spectator Sport Author Matthew Algeo They'd have little cots set up inside the track where they would nap a total of maybe three hours a day. "They were on the track almost continuously. "These guys were walking 600 miles in six days," Alego says. Huge crowds packed indoor arenas to watch the best walkers walk.
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"And there wasn't much for them to do in their free time, so pedestrianism - competitive walking matches - filled a void for people. "In the decades after the Civil War there was mass urbanization in the United States millions of people moving into the cities," Algeo tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "Watching people walk was America's favorite spectator sport," Matthew Algeo says in his new book, Pedestrianism. We may think of baseball as America's national pastime, but in the 1870s and 1880s there was another sports craze sweeping the nation: competitive walking. His unique stride was described as "wobbly." Walking The Walk: Fans look on as pedestrian Edward Payson Weston walks at a New York City roller rink in 1874.