Today is the anniversary of Jim Thorpe‘s birth, in 1888. Thorpe was voted “The Greatest Athlete of the Century” in 1950 by the Associated Press for his decades of excellence in baseball, lacrosse and football. Thorpe was a gold medalist in the 1912 Olympics, in the decathlon and pentathlon, but because he’d played semi-pro baseball in 1909 he lost his amateur status and they took his medals away (this was in the old days, when the Olympics was for amateur athletes).
His medals were returned to his family in 1983.
From the Who2 blog:
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