Rugby

Market town and railway junction in Warwickshire, central England, on the River Avon, 19 km/12 southeast of Coventry; population (2001) 61,400. Industries include engineering and the manufacture of cement, and the town has a cattle market. Rugby School (1567), a private school for boys, established its reputation under headmaster Thomas Arnold; it was described in Thomas Hughes' semi-autobiographical classic Tom Brown's Schooldays. Rugby football originated at the school in 1823.

The poet Rupert Brooke was born here in 1887.

A village until the early 19th century, Rugby expanded with the advent of the London-Birmingham railway in 1838.

rugby

Contact sport that is traditionally believed to have originated at Rugby School, England, in 1823 when a boy, William Webb Ellis, picked up the ball and ran with it while playing football (now soccer). It is now played in two forms: Rugby League and Rugby Union.

Rugby

Honegger's second symphonic movement for orchestra, following Pacific 231 and succeeded by Mouvement symphonique no. 3. It is an impression of a game of rugby football. It was first performed at the Orchestre Symphonique, Paris, on 19 October 1928.

Rugby

Town and administrative headquarters of Pierce County, north-central North Dakota; population (1990) 2,900. It is located 97 km/60 mi east of Minot. Settled in 1886, it is a centre for local dairy products, poultry, livestock, and grain. Rugby is best known for its geographical location at what has been determined to be the centre of North America. The Geographical Center Museum here explores the area's history.

Rugby

Hamlet in Morgan County, northeast Tennessee. It is situated on the Clear Fork River, to the south of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. Established in 1880 as an experimental colony by Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown's School Days (set in Rugby, England), it was to be a rationally-developed agricultural and industrial community peopled by both English immigrants and local families. Though the experiment failed within a decade, Rugby remains a rural community visited by those interested in its history.