For many years, it was widely believed that human beings could not
run a mile in less than four minutes. Throughout the 1940s and
early 1950s, many runners came close to the four-minute mark, but
all fell short. On May 6th, 1954, in Oxford, England, Roger Bannister
ran a mile in three minutes and 59 seconds. Only 46 days after
Bannister’s historic run, John Landy broke the record again. By 1957,
16 more runners had broken through what once was thought to be