This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommend it.

The Most Modern of Modern Sports by Jennifer Noonan.

Thank you. Modern Sports by Jennifer Noonan. When the Admiral Van Heen shirt docked in England in 1936, she held more than one surprise for the men who unloaded her cargo.

Exotic produce and spices were common aboard the merchant ship, which had traded between East Africa and England for close to

100 years. But live animals were considerably rarer. What's more, the manifest had grown since

beginning their latest journey.

A captured bongo antelope headed for the London Zoo had turned out to be pregnant and given birth during the weeks at sea.

The newborn was named Henshirt in honor of the crew, and London newspapers celebrated

mother and calf as the first bongo specimens to reach the country alive.

The bigger surprise, however, didn't make the papers, at least not at first.

Tucked in the cargo hold were several giant

crates made of teak wood, whose contents could only be inferred from the occasional predatory

growl passing through the air holes. The animal's escort and caretaker, a teenage boy named

Ali, had never been to Europe and spoke only Swahili. But he somehow managed to send word of their arrival to his patron,

who had taken the faster route home by plane several weeks earlier.

Soon, a caravan of rented furniture trucks arrived to carry them inland.

Unlike the bongos, these created beasts were not headed for the zoo.

At 4 a.m., just days before New Year's Eve, the trucks arrived at Hackbridge Kennels,

one of several facilities run by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Though originally intended for strays, public animal shelters had seen significant expansion

during World War I, as soldiers left their dogs behind to go fight on the front.

...