North Korea played in the World Cup in 1966 [BBC Documentary on YouTube]. The 1966 World Cup was the subject of bitter disagreement before a ball was ever kicked. Sixteen African nations boycotted the tournament in protest of a 1964 FIFA ruling that required the champion team from the African zone to enter a playoff round against the winners of either the Asian or the Oceania zone in order to win a place in the Cup. [more inside]
posted by vectr on Jun 16, 2010 - 22 comments

Home of the Underdogs is no more. Although in decline since 2006 or so, it was once *the* place for abandonware. HotU hosted 5000+ game reviews (by contrast, the "next-best-thing-still-around", abandonia has around 1000), the majority of them with the games available for download, including some titles that are now incredibly difficult to find. [more inside]
posted by juv3nal on Feb 18, 2009 - 77 comments

Four high school students -- gold chains, fake diamond rings, patchy, adolescent mustaches and sharp brains -- take on MIT and others in a robot competition. They're undocumented Mexican Americans living in trailers and shabby houses in Arizona. They raise only $800 from the community to fund their project, while the MIT team raises $11,000 from corporate donors. They have to scrounge for the "most best tampons" at the last moment to fix a leak in their robot. The other teams snicker at their garishly painted robot when it's unveiled poolside. You know how this is going to end. You know. But it's very satisfying to read nonetheless. (via Amygdala)
posted by maudlin on Mar 30, 2005 - 86 comments

Long Live The Underdog! One of the few things my father taught me - and followed to his dying day - was to "always support the underdogs. They may not be right, but they have the same right to be wrong as we do." Or more, as John Stuart Mill would argue and a certain Walthamstow group of anarchists would agree. Underdog Online - the outsider's in site - celebrates the underdog and the outsider in a healthily frivolous and assertive way - from gay men and the Internet and The Smiths's cover art to the suggestion of a beer dinner for June 21 and a quirky report on how lawyers experience murder trials. Long live the underdog, indeed!
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jun 19, 2003 - 10 comments