Today in History
What went down and why you should care.
jan 18 Learn More Jim Thorpe's Olympic Medals Reinstated
The International Olympic Committee reinstated Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals on this day in 1983. So how'd he lose them in the first place? Pro athletes were forbidden from competing in the Olympics, and Thorpe had played pro baseball when he was in college, for a whopping $2 a game. (That would be about $50 today.) This was the norm for college athletes back in 1913, and most of them used faked names. Thorpe didn't. When the IOC found out, they stripped him of the gold he'd won for the decathlon and pentathlon in 1912. Harsh. Seventy years later, the IOC finally reversed their decision and gave Thorpe's medals to two of his kids. Well, not his real medals. Those had been put in museums and subsequently stolen.
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