Word: contests
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...Face-stuffing has been around for centuries, of course: the Edda, a collection of 13th-century Norse myths, tells of an eating contest between the god Loki and his servant (the servant won by eating the plate). But organized competitive eating - consuming as much as you can, as fast as you can, within a given period of time - is relatively new. According to Major League Eating, the sport's governing body (yes, there is one) the American version of the pastime began in 1916, the year that Nathan's Famous held its first Fourth of July hot dog-eating contest...
...Eating contests weren't limited to hot dogs, however. New York Yankees outfielder Ping Bodie competed in a 1919 pasta-eating contest against an ostrich in Jacksonville, Florida. (Again, according to legend, the ostrich passed out after its 11th bowl and Bodie won by default.) In 1958, a pair of American and Soviet weightlifters fought their own version of the Cold War by eating eight lobsters and six squab in front of 250 onlookers at a New York restaurant. They didn't even touch the dozen lamb chops and 10 steaks waiting for them, and ultimately declared themselves failures...
...After languishing for decades in county fair pie-eating obscurity, the sport rediscovered legitimacy in the mid-1990s when two brothers, George and Richard Shea, took over Nathan's publicity. They increased the hot dog contest's attendance from the hundreds to the thousands, and other restaurants jumped on the trend. The Sheas founded the International Federation of Competitive Eating (since retitled Major League Eating) to oversee the events. They now host 80 to 100 competitions a year, featuring everything from deep fried asparagus to tiramisu. The top events are broadcast live on ESPN; last spring, Nintendo announced a competitive...
...Zimbabwe's opposition movement has been brutally suppressed and its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew from the presidential contest prior to the vote, citing violence and intimidation...
...every election since, candidates taking federal funds for the primary contest agreed to spend a limited amount - set by the FEC - during that stage of the campaign. But candidates must manage their money carefully: Bob Dole reached his spending limit in the 1996 race months before the party's summer convention, leaving him gasping in the final weeks of primaries and prompting George W. Bush to opt out of public primary funding altogether in the 2000 election. (Bush did take $67.6 million in general election public funds.) In 2004, John Kerry and Howard Dean also opted out of primary public...