MACCOMO the lion tamer is dead – that was the shocking news that readers of The Northern Echo were waking up to 150 years ago this week. Martini Maccomo had died in The Palatine Hotel in Sunderland and is probably the only person to be buried in the North-East with the words “lion hunter” on his headstone. Even more remarkably, one of the lions which mauled him has for generations been one of the region’s most curious museum exhibits. Maccomo was said to have been born in Angola (although he might just have been a Liverpudlian called Arthur Williams who invented a glamorous back story), and he was billed as “the African Wild Beast Tamer”, “Angola s Mighty Czar of All Lion Tamers” and “The Hero of a Thousand Combats”.
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The first rule when the NFL and AFL were vying for college players in the early 1960s was there are no rules.
Teams banded together in their battle against the other league by allowing some leeway during their drafts. Which may explain how the Jets were able to choose Oklahoma s two-time All-America linebacker Carl McAdams in the third round of the 1966 AFL Draft. Actually, I was drafted with the first choice by the Jets. We d already made our agreements on what was going to be done, my pay and everything, McAdams said. And they came to me and said, Would it bother you to be the third-round choice?