The 440-yard dash, or quarter-mile race, is a sprint race in track and field competitions.

In many countries, athletes previously competed in the 440 yard dash (402.336 m) – also referred to as the 'quarter-mile'. In the 19th century it was thought of as a middle distance race.

World-record holder Lon Meyers of Virginia who ran in the 1880s was the first runner to consistently break 50 seconds at the distance, and ran more 440s under 50 seconds than the total run by all amateur and professional athletes of his era. In 1947, Herb McKenley of Jamaica set a world record in the event with a time of 46.3 seconds, which he lowered the following year to a new world record of 46.0 seconds. In 1971, John Smith lowered the world record to 44.5 seconds.

Race distances changes as events with their roots in races of imperial measurements which were later altered to metric-distance races. The 400 Metre Dash is the successor to the 440 yard dash. An athlete who competes in the 400 m may still be referred to as 'quarter-miler'.

A dash is one of several kinds of punctuation mark. Dashes are similar to hyphens, but differ from them primarily in length, and serve different functions. The most common versions of the dash are the en dash (–) and the em dash (—).

There are several forms of dash, of which the most common are:

Less common are the two-em dash (⸺) and three-em dash (⸻), both added to Unicode with version 6.1 as U+2E3A and U+2E3B. Windows character codes require that Num Lock be on.

The figure dash (‒) is so named because it is the same width as a digit, at least in fonts with digits of equal width. This is true of most fonts, not only monospaced fonts.

The figure dash is used when a dash must be used within numbers (e.g. phone number 555‒0199). It does not indicate a range, for which the en dash is used; nor does it function as the minus sign, which also uses a separate glyph.

The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a hyphen-minus instead. In Unicode, the figure dash is U+2012 (decimal 8210). HTML authors must use the numeric forms ‒ or ‒ to type it unless the file is in Unicode; there is no equivalent character entity. In TeX, the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be substituted when using standard TeX fonts.

The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History is a 1978 book by Michael H. Hart, reprinted in 1992 with revisions. It is a ranking of the 100 people who, according to Hart, most influenced human history.

The first person on Hart's list is the Prophet of Islam Muhammad. Hart asserted that Muhammad was "supremely successful" in both the religious and secular realms. He also believed that Muhammad's role in the development of Islam was far more influential than Jesus' collaboration in the development of Christianity. He attributes the development of Christianity to St. Paul, who played a pivotal role in its dissemination."

The 1992 revisions included the demotion of figures associated with Communism, such as Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, and the introduction of Mikhail Gorbachev. Hart took sides in the Shakespearean authorship issue and substituted Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for William Shakespeare. Hart also substituted Niels Bohr and Henri Becquerel with Ernest Rutherford, thus correcting an error in the first edition. Henry Ford was also promoted from the "Honorary Mentions" list, replacing Pablo Picasso. Finally, some of the rankings were re-ordered, although no one listed in the top ten changed position.

Diane Lynn Dixon (born September 23, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American athlete who competed mainly in the 400 metres.

She competed for the United States in the 1988 Summer Olympics held in Seoul, South Korea in the 4 x 400 metres where she won the Silver medal with her team mates Denean Howard, Valerie Brisco-Hooks and Florence Griffith Joyner. Second place in that race is still the second fastest time ever run in that event and the current American record. She set her personal record of 49.84 while finishing third in an open semi-final in Seoul. Four years earlier she ran in the qualifying heat for the same relay that eventually took gold.

Dixon was also a part of two medal-winning teams in the 4x400 relay at the IAAF World Championships, taking a bronze in 1987 in Rome and a silver in 1991 in Tokyo.

Dixon was known for her aggressive frontrunning style indoors, where she could take the lead at the break (after the first 50 meters) and hold off her competitors who would have to run around her. In 1981 she won her first of her USA Indoor Track and Field Championships at the (then) Imperial distance of 440 yards. In 1983 she won again and began an unprecedented streak of ten consecutive wins in the 440 or 400 metres. In 1985, Dixon won the 400 metres at the IAAF World Indoor Championships. She repeated the feat again in 1991, setting the American Record at 50.64 seconds in the event. That record stood until March 13, 2010, when it was broken by Francena McCorory from Hampton University at the NCAA Championships.