Cyprus-Forum.com

[bill cobbett]

You lucky, lucky people...!!!...

For the second time in a month, later tonight, London will be hosting another Opening Ceremony, at great public expense, to entertain you all.

This one for the opening of the Paralympic Games.

News is that this ceremony will wind back the clock a little to before the Industrial Revolution that was the theme of the Opening Ceremony for the London Games to the time generally referred to as the Age of Enlightenment, with those massive strides in Real Science and the Arts in Europe that we still benefit from today.

We are promised a cameo part from one of the greatest scientists of our age, Professor Stephen Hawkins, who as all will know has overcome great, great personal challenges throughout his life yet still has given us some of the best descriptions of our Universe that are around.

A reminder that the Para Games have their Spiritual Home at the Stoke Mandeville Hopsital, which is near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and were inspired by the work of Sir Ludwig "Poppa" Guttman, a German Jewish chap. Here's a little bit about Sir Ludwig Guttman, straight out of wiki...

Sir Ludwig Guttmann

Ludwig Guttmann, who was the first child of the family, was born in Tost, within Upper Silesia, Germany (now Toszek, Poland) in 1899. His family moved when he was three years old to the Silesia city of Konigshutte. In 1917, he began work at the Accident Hospital in Konigshutte. It was here where Guttmann met his first patient with a spinal cord injury, a young badly-injured coalminer. Sadly the miner died five weeks later from sepsis.[2] In April 1918, he began his medical studies at the University of Breslau. Guttmann left in the Spring of 1919 to study at the University of Freiburg and received his Doctorate of Medicine in 1924.
Dr Guttmann started work at the Jewish Hospital in Breslau. By the 1930s he had become the director of the hospital. Following the violent attacks on Jewish people and properties during Kristallnacht on 9 November, 1938, Guttmann ordered his staff to admit anyone without question. The following day he justified his decision on a case-by-case basis with the Gestapo. Out of 64 admissions, 60 patients were saved from arrest and deportation to concentration camps.[10]
[edit]Britain

In early 1939, Guttmann and his family left Germany because of the Nazi's persecution of the Jews. They arrived in Oxford, England, on 14 March 1939.[2] The Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA), which negotiated with the British Home Office on their behalf, gave Guttmann and his family £250 (equivalent to around £10,000 in today's money) to help them to establish themselves in Oxford. Guttmann continued his Spinal Injury research at the Nuffield Department of Neurosurgery in the Radcliffe Infirmary. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he and his family stayed in the home of Lord Lindsay, CARA Councillor and Master of Balliol College.[11] Guttmann became a naturalised citizen of the United Kingdom in 1945.[12]
[edit]Stoke Mandeville

In September 1943 the British government asked Dr Guttmann to establish the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire.[2] When the centre opened on 1 February 1944, Guttmann was appointed its director (a position he held until 1946). As director of the UK's first specialist unit for treating spinal injuries, he believed that sport was a major method of therapy for injured military personnel helping them build up physical strength and self-respect.
Guttmann organised the first Stoke Mandeville Games for disabled personnel on 28 July 1948, the same day as the start of the London Olympic Games.