In a first, women throng Saudi stadium for national day RIYADH: Hundreds of women thronged a sports stadium for the first time to mark Saudi Arabia´s national day Saturday, celebrated across the conservative kingdom with a raucous display of concerts, folk dance and fireworks. The presence of women at the King Fahd stadium marks a departure from previous celebrations in the Gulf kingdom where they are effectively barred from sports arenas by strict rules on public segregation of the sexes. Women were allowed to enter the stadium, a previously male-only venue used mostly for football matches, with their families and seated separately from single men to watch a musical show and a play on Saudi history. As a swell of enthusiastic women cheering swept through the stadium, with a few wearing colourful wigs on top of their veils, some Saudi men on social media lauded their participation as a "historic" moment. Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia has some of the world´s ...