Bannister’s epochal 4-mile record-smashing run

Many had come close to it, but were eventually thwarted as if held back by powers unseen and demonic.

They all were, until one drizzly afternoon of May 6, 1954 at the Iffley track in Oxford, Englishman Roger Bannister, a medical student, became the first man ever to shatter the 4-minute mile barrier.