The Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen twice.
In 1966 Pickles the dog found it; after Brazil won it outright in 1970, it was stolen again in 1983 and has never been recovered.
The events
- Pickles the dog finds the World Cup1966 · Upper Norwood, London. On 20 March 1966, four months before England hosted the World Cup, the Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen from an exhibition in London. A week later Pickles the collie, out for a walk, found it in the street, wrapped in newspaper. He was invited to England's victory banquet; his owner got about £5,000.
- Pelé's third World Cup1970 · Estadio Azteca, Mexico City. On 21 June 1970, in the final at the Estadio Azteca, Brazil beat Italy 4–1. Pelé became the first, and so far only, player to win three World Cups, and Brazil, with its third title, kept the Jules Rimet Trophy for good. It was the first World Cup broadcast in colour, and that Brazil side is often called the greatest ever.
More amazing facts
- 1964 The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the first broadcast overseas without flying tapes across.
- 1965 · 1975 The first man to walk in space was, ten years later, the first to shake an American's hand in orbit.
- 1966 · 1973 · 2008 The architect of the Sydney Opera House never saw it finished.
- 1966 · 1967 One of the first computer-versus-computer chess matches was won by a program from Moscow.
- 1967 · 1974 Humanity's most famous ancestor is named after a Beatles song.
- 1967 The first pulsar was jokingly named LGM-1, for 'little green men'. In 1967 Cambridge student Jocelyn Bell spotted radio pulses so regular that the team seriously checked whether they could be signals from aliens.