1996 Summer Olympics Basil Poledouris. Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic cauldron and later received a replacement gold medal for his boxing victory in the 1960 Summer Olympics. For the torch ceremony, more than 10,000 Olympic torches were manufactured by the American Meter Company and electroplated by Erie Plating Company. Each torch weighed about and was made primarily of aluminum, with a Georgia pecan wood handle and gold ornamentation. The 1996 Summer Olympic programme featured 271 events in 26 sports. Softball, beach volleyball and mountain biking debuted on the Olympic program, together with women's football and lightweight rowing. In women's gymnastics, Lilia Podkopayeva became
Home After Three Months Away Home After Three Months Away 'Home After Three Months Away' is one of several "confessional" poems by Robert Lowell which appeared in his book "Life Studies". The poem was written after Lowell started returning home for weekends from the McLean Hospital, where he was being treated for mental illness, in Belmont, Boston in early 1958. Lowell was finally released from McLean in June 1959. Ian Hamilton, who wrote a biography on Lowell, suggests that the poem owes something to W.D. Snodgrass' poem "Heart's Needle" since "Heart's Needle," which came out prior to "Life Studies", focused on Snodgrass' relationship with his