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Live Saturday morning global sports show with reports, debate and humour

Live Saturday morning global sports show with reports, debate and humour.

Sportshour: The Truth and the Myth of the Christmas Truce

The Truth and Myth of the Christmas Truce 1914

20/12/2014

The Truth and the Myth of the Christmas Truce

BBC World Service - Sportshour, The Truth and the Myth of the Christmas Truce

Guns fell silent, out came a ball, a good time was had. Then industrial slaughter resumed

The guns fell silent, out came a ball, and a good time was had. Then industrial slaughter resumed.

Exactly 100 years ago World War One was entering its first and what many expected to be only winter. Little did they know the horrors that were to unfold in the years that followed. As that first war time Christmas approached a century ago something that would never happen again in the history of warfare occurred, a spontaneous truce broke out and famously in many cases the fighting was replaced by football, but what was myth and what was truth about the 1914 Christmas truce.

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Chris Stokes was part of the famous Jamaican bobsleigh team that made such an impression on the world that they made the Hollywood film Cool Runnings. Now Chris’s daughter NaTalia is in training to be part of the Jamaican bob sleigh team at the 2018 Winter Olympics!

Frozen, but no Sign of Disney
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As 2014 draws to an end, so does an era in the world of sport, as the last wooden lacrosse sticks outside of the Native American community are produced and sold. Tom Beckett of T S Hattersley & Son in Manchester, one of the world's last wooden lacrosse stick makers, has decided to retire from his craft and hang up his tools, and with it leaves the world a little poorer for it.

Mandela: 'Save Kids Lives'
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Sporting Witness
In 1956, Angela Buxton and Althea Gibson formed one of the most unusual doubles partnerships in the history of women's tennis. As a British Jew and an African-American, they'd both faced prejudice from the tennis establishment in their respective countries but they went on to cause a major upset by winning Wimbledon.
 
(Photo: The 1914 Christmas truce. Credit: Hulton Archive)

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