Welcome to the August edition of The Throwback, your monthly hit of entertaining and informative history tales that will make you say, “Wait! What?” If you are receiving this e-mail, you have signed up on my website or at one of my lectures or author events.
If you're like me, you've been spending a lot of the past week watching the 2020 Summer Olympics. It's definitely been the strangest one in our lifetimes with no spectators cheering on the athletes—not to mention that it's no longer 2020.
The 2020 Summer Games, however, can not compete with the gold medalist for weirdest Olympic ever—the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis.
After the first two modern Olympics were held in Athens and Paris, European nations had little appetite for traveling by sea and rail to the American heartland. Only a dozen countries bothered to show up. Even the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, skipped the Games and later wrote, “I had a sort of presentiment that the Olympiad would match the mediocrity of the town.”
With little competition, American athletes hauled in more gold than Fort Knox. They topped the podium 78 times and won 239 medals—the most ever in a single Olympic.
The most bizarre event of the 1904 Summer Olympics, which was spread over five months, was the marathon. Ran at a distance of 24.8 miles, the marathon turned out to be a hot mess in more ways than one. With the thermometer soaring over 90 degrees, competitors struggled to stay on their feet and choked on dust kicked up by escorting automobiles traversing the parched, dusty roads. The heat felled more than half of the 32 runners.
South African Len Tau, a Tswana tribesman who was part of the Boer War exhibit at the World’s Fair also being staged in St. Louis, encountered obstacles of a more canine variety. Wild dogs chased him nearly a mile off the course.
To the cheers of thousands of his countrymen, American Fred Lorz was the first runner to cross the finish line. Little did the crowd know, however, that Lorz had ridden 10 miles of the marathon course in an automobile after cramping up early in the race. When his car broke down, a rejuvenated Lorz ran the final 5 miles. The hoax, however, was quickly exposed, and Lorz was disqualified.
Back on the course, stomach cramps did in Cuban runner Felix Carvajal after he snacked on green apples picked from an orchard along the course. American Thomas Hicks was struggling as well. Seeing Hicks flagging, the runner’s assistants administered him an early 20th-century form of a performance enhancer—a dose of strychnine, sulfate in egg whites and a swig of brandy. Potentially lethal, but perfectly within the rules at the time. The rejuvenated Hicks managed to win the 1904 Olympic marathon before collapsing after crossing the finish line.
The marathon had been so grueling that many felt it beyond the bounds of human capability. Even the director of the 1904 Summer Games, James Sullivan, opposed the race’s return to the Olympics. “It is indefensible on any ground, but historic,” he said.
In spite of the protests, the marathon returned for the 1908 Olympics in London and for the first time was run at its present distance of 26 miles, 385 yards, perhaps due to royal prerogative. The lengthening of the race was said to have been done at the behest of the Princess of Wales who wished for her children to be able to watch the start of the race from the window of the royal nursery at Windsor Castle. The 1908 marathon was crazy in its own right, and you can click here to read more.
Interested in more Olympics history? Check out these articles:
The Olympics Held Behind Nazi Barbed Wire
Although World War II forced the cancellation of the 1944 Summer Games, an unofficial Olympics took place in a most unlikely setting—a Nazi prisoner of war camp.
WHAT I’M WATCHING: You may have heard about the controversy surrounding the new book Forget the Alamo, which challenges the traditional narrative of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo. In particular, the authors write that the mythology that has arisen around the Alamo leaves out the history that the white settlers who fought at the Alamo did so in part because they opposed Mexican laws that would free the enslaved workers they needed to farm cotton. Under pressure from Texan political leaders, the Bullock Texas State History Museum cancelled a scheduled discussion about the book, as one of the authors writes about in this Washington Post editorial. It's always disappointing when discussions and debates around history are stifled and prevent a greater understanding of the past. You can watch the authors discuss their book in this virtual event hosted by BookPeople Bookstore in Austin, Texas.
WHAT I’M READING: In last month's edition of the Throwback, I wrote about the discovery of a rare copy of the Dunlap Broadside of the Declaration of Independence that had been discovered in a New Hampshire house's attic. A friend then sent along this story about the discovery of a handwritten Revolutionary War diaryby John Claypoole, the third husband of Betsy Ross. The diary had been found in a North Carolina garage tucked into a box beneath bundles of letters from the 1950s. You never know what historical treasures may be lurking around your house!
PLEASE SUPPORT INDIE BOOKSTORES! The publishing industry has hardly been immune from the economic impact of the coronavirus. For businesses operating on small margins and struggling to compete with Amazon.com to begin with, the shutdown has inflicted deep blows on independent bookstores. When shopping for your next read, please consider making a purchase from your local independent bookstore or through Bookshop.org, which supports local bookstores. Every little bit helps.
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After the first two modern Olympics were held in Athens and Paris, European nations had little appetite for traveling by sea and rail to the American heartland. Only a dozen countries bothered to show up. Even the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, skipped the Games and later wrote, “I had a sort of presentiment that the Olympiad would match the mediocrity of the town.”
