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Æthelred I, King of Wessex

Æthelred I, King of Wessex.
Æthelred I (845 or 848 – 871) was King of Wessex from 865 until his death. He was the fourth of five sons of King Æthelwulf. He succeeded his elder brother Æthelberht and was followed by his youngest brother, Alfred the Great. Æthelred's two infant sons were passed over for the kingship. Æthelred's accession coincided with the arrival of the Viking Great Heathen Army in England. Over the next five years the Vikings conquered Northumbria and East Anglia, before launching a full-scale attack on Wessex in late 870. In early January 871, Æthelred was defeated at the Battle of Reading. Four days later he scored a victory in the Battle of Ashdown, but this was followed by two defeats at Basing and Meretun. He died shortly after Easter. Alfred was forced to buy off the Vikings, but decisively defeated them seven years later. Æthelred's reign was important numismatically, as he adopted the Mercian Lunettes design, creating a unified coinage design for southern England for the first time.

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Cardiff City Stadium

Cardiff City Stadium.
Sixteen grounds have hosted the Wales national football team in international association football competitions. The team played its first match in 1876 against Scotland before hosting its first home match the following year at the Racecourse Ground in Wrexham, the world's oldest international football ground still in use. The ground hosted all of Wales's matches until 1890. Matches were held in several parts of the country, including Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea, over the following two decades. Ninian Park in Cardiff hosted its first international in 1911, and Vetch Field in Swansea hosted its first in 1921; they shared Wales's home matches with the Racecourse for nearly a century. In 1989 the team began playing at the National Stadium in Cardiff, and in 2000 the Millennium Stadium became the team's new home ground. After a gradual drop in attendance, Cardiff City Stadium (pictured) was designated Wales's permanent home venue. The Racecourse has held more matches (94) than any other venue.

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John Neal (writer)

John Neal (writer).
John Neal (1793–1876) was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. He delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s. Neal advanced American art, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement. The first author to use natural diction, he was also the first to use "son-of-a-bitch" in a work of fiction. He attained his greatest literary achievements between 1817 and 1835 as the first American published in British literary journals, author of the first history of American literature, America's first art critic, and a forerunner of the American Renaissance. One of the first men to advocate women's rights in the US, he affirmed intellectual equality between men and women, fought coverture laws, and demanded equal pay, better education and suffrage for women, declaring "I tell you there is no hope for woman, till she has a hand in making the law".

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