The Summer Olympic Games, also known as the Games of the Olympiad, are a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inaugural Games took place in 1896 in Athens, Greece, and most recently in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) organises the Games and oversees the host city's preparations. In each Olympic event, gold medals are awarded for first place, silver medals are awarded for second place, and bronze medals are awarded for third place; this tradition began in 1904. The Winter Olympic Games were created out of the success of the Summer Olympics. It is regarded as the largest and most prestigious multi-sport international event in the world.
The Commonwealth Games, often referred to as the Friendly Games, is a quadrennial international multi-sport event among athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The event was first held in 1930, and, with the exception of 1942 and 1946, have successively run every four years since. The Games were called the British Empire Games from 1930 to 1950, the British Empire and Commonwealth Games from 1954 to 1966, and British Commonwealth Games from 1970 to 1974. Athletes with a disability are included as full members of their national teams since 2002, making the Commonwealth Games the first fully inclusive international multi-sport event. In 2018, the Games became the first global multi-sport event to feature an equal number of men's and women's medal events and four years later they are the first global multi-sport event to have more events for women than men.
The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. The Australian Open starts in the middle of January and continues for two weeks coinciding with the Australia Day holiday. It features men's and women's singles; men's, women's, and mixed doubles; junior's championships; and wheelchair, legends, and exhibition events. Before 1988, it was played on grass courts, but since then three types of hardcourt surfaces have been used: green-coloured Rebound Ace up to 2007, blue Plexicushion from 2008 to 2019, and blue GreenSet since 2020.
A telethon is a televised fundraising event that lasts many hours or even days, the purpose of which is to raise money for a charitable, political or other purportedly worthy cause.
World Expo 88, also known as Expo 88, was a specialised Expo held in Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, Australia, during a six-month period between Saturday, 30 April 1988 and Sunday, 30 October 1988, inclusive. The theme of the Expo was "Leisure in the Age of Technology", and the mascot for the Expo was an Australian platypus named Expo Oz.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is the United States National Cultural Center, located on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. It was named in 1964 as a memorial to assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Opened on September 8, 1971, the center hosts many different genres of performance art, such as theater, dance, orchestras, jazz, pop, psychedelic and folk music.
The Country Music Association Awards, also known as the CMA Awards or CMAs, are presented to country music artists and broadcasters to recognize outstanding achievement in the country music industry. The televised annual presentation ceremony features performances and award presentations by popular country music artists, with occasional appearances from pop and rock artists. The CMA Awards were first presented in 1967, and televised for the first time the following year.
The Canadian Open, also known as the Canada Masters, and currently branded as the National Bank Open presented by Rogers for sponsorship reasons, is an annual tennis tournament held in Ontario and Quebec. The second-oldest tournament in all of tennis, the men's competition is a Masters 1000 event on the ATP Tour, and the women's competition is a WTA 1000 tournament on the WTA Tour. The competition is played on outdoor hard courts.
The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and Documenta, it is one of the longest running exhibitions of its kind and was the first biennale to be established in the Asia-Pacific region.
Sand festivals or festivals of sand sculpture are exhibitions of sculptures made of sand carried out in various places around the world. These events usually include a competition.
The Philippine International Convention Center is a convention center located in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines. The facility has been the host of numerous local and foreign conventions, meetings, fairs, and social events.
The National Day of Mourning, or Workers' Mourning Day is observed in Canada on 28 April. It commemorates workers who have been killed, injured or suffered illness due to workplace related hazards and occupational exposures.
The Sculpture by the Sea exhibition in Sydney and Perth is Australia's largest annual outdoor sculpture exhibition. This exhibition was initiated in 1997, at Bondi Beach and it featured sculptures by both Australian and overseas artists. In 2005, a companion event was established at Cottesloe Beach in Western Australia featuring over 70 artists. In 2009 it was announced that Aarhus in Denmark would host the first Sculpture by the Sea exhibition outside of Australia.
A flypast is a ceremonial or honorific flight by a group of aircraft or a single aircraft. The term flypast is used in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. In the United States, the terms flyover and flyby are used.
Vertical Blue is a freediving competition which has been held annually in The Bahamas at Dean's Blue Hole since April 2008 by freediving world record holder William Trubridge. It is an AIDA International or CMAS in 2021 judged competition and has been the venue for multiple world and national records for athletes coming from countries all over the world.
FIRST LEGO Challenge League Open Championships are robotics competitions held and managed by FIRST LEGO League Partners to bring FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams from many states, regions and countries together to compete in host cities around the world. These are the highest level of FIRST LEGO League competitions that are managed by organizations other than FIRST. The FIRST-managed global competition for FIRST LEGO League is the FLL World Festival. There are usually multiple Open Championships each year.
Jalsa Salana is the formal, annual gathering of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community initiated by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the community who claimed to be the Promised Messiah and Mahdi of the end days. Usually, the gathering spans over three days, beginning on Friday after the Friday Sermon. Typically, the flag hoisting ceremony is used to identify its commencement. Although there is a central, international Jalsa attended by Ahmadis from across the world, many of the countries hold their own national jalsa, sometimes attended by the Khalifatul Masih.
Bianca Vanessa Andreescu is a Canadian professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of No. 4 in the world, and is the highest-ranked Canadian in the history of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). Andreescu was the champion at the US Open and the Canadian Open in 2019, having defeated Serena Williams to win both titles. She is the first Canadian tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles title, and the first to win the Canadian Open in 50 years. She was the first player to win a Grand Slam singles title as a teenager since Maria Sharapova in 2006.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the most significant disruption to the worldwide sporting calendar since World War II. Across the world and to varying degrees, sports events have been cancelled or postponed. The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were rescheduled to 2021. At the time, spectators had no games to watch and players no games to play. Only a few countries and territories, such as Hong Kong, Turkmenistan, Belarus, and Nicaragua, continued professional sporting matches as planned.
The Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II is being celebrated in 2022 in the Commonwealth of Nations to mark the 70th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 6 February 1952.
