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January 18, 2025 33 mins

A few years after Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the ancient sporting event known as the Olympics, he brought the games to the U.S. for the first time. The 1904 Summer Olympics were held in St. Louis, Missouri, coinciding with the 1904 World's Fair. Seems set to make history, right? Not the way you'd think. Join Ben and Noel as they take a closer look at the series of disastrous decisions and bizarre notions that led one games organizer to set up his own racist olympics in this week's Classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. We return to
you with a classic episode that's been on our mind
as we recorded an exploration of the World's Fairs. We
mentioned this briefly and we'd love to share it with
you in full. Over in Saint Louis, Missouri, during the
nineteen oh four World's Fair, people also held the Summer Olympics,

(00:25):
and got to be honest with you, it was ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, ridiculously offensive and terrible.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
And I'm so glad though that we hit upon this
classic episode right around our current conversations about some of
the worst examples of things that happened at World's Fairs.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
So strap in.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
There's going to be some stuff that's going to make
you cringe a little bit in this episode, but it's all,
you know, it's all in the service of a ridiculous history.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Let's begin today's

(01:21):
show with a contextual fact. According to what we know
from historical records, the very first Olympic Games in antiquity
can be traced back to seven seventy six BCE.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Ben Noel, You've blown my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
It's weird when we think about just how ancient that
practice was. Now, the games did not occur every year
continually from that point.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Yeah, there was a lull, about a fifteen hundred year lull,
as it turns out, and then it was kind of
resuscitated by a guy by the name of Pierre Baron
de Coubertin. Yes, and Casey Pegram joins us, hello, is
that correct?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, Pierre de coup Dartin.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
And that's been Casey on the case from our super producer,
Casey Pegram. WHOA you cool with those double sound cure
You flipped the script there, my man, I love it.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
But no, Pierre who was originally known by Pierre de Fredier, Casey.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Pierre de Fleidy feity flighty.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
That's that's why he's here.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
He's here for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
He's here for amazing reasons. So tell us about this guy.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
Now that we've jacked up the flow entirely with valuable
pronunciation information from mister Casey Pegrim. Yeah, this guy was
an educator from France who totally revived the Olympic Games
in eighteen ninety six in Greece. Indeed, Ben, as it
would be appropriate to do, I guess to carry on
that torch that. Yeah, I was in Athens in eighteen

(02:54):
ninety six, and by most accounts I've read that one
went okay. And then they had one in Paris which
was apparently a ship show. And then they had one
that is the subject of today's episode in Old Saint Louis, Missouri.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yes, massurra, Missouri, Missouri got uh ride in or chime
in on ridiculous historians local Missouri residents to let us
know how you prefer to pronounce.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
It, shred us. We welcome it.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
I'm having so much fun with that. So it's true.
Nol America's first Olympic Games, the first Olympic Games in
the US were held in nineteen oh four in Saint
Louis or Saint Louis, and they were tied to that
year's World Fair, which happened in the same city, and
there was even Okay, So before we get too deep

(03:45):
into this, folks, things were already starting off on a bizarre, awkward,
and terrible foot when the nineteen oh four Olympics moved
to Missouri because they were originally supposed to be in
the US, but supposed to be in a different city.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah, in the city of Chicago, which I'm very much
looking forward to traveling to next weekend to see the
band My Bloody Valentine. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah,
I'm looking forward to Chicago's a beautiful city. But unfortunately
Saint Louis made some problems for Chicago because Saint Louis
was already set to host this World's Fair, which had

(04:21):
a really interesting name that was not the World's Fair.
It was called the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exhibition. And they
were none too happy. The organizers of that little shindig
none too happy that the Olympics were going to give
them a run for their money during the same period
in the summer in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
So they threatened, according to this.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
Article by Nate Demeyo of Memory Palace Fame on Slate,
to out Olympics the Olympics, in other words, making it
such a big dog and pony show that the Olympics,
which was not as widely known at the time its
being only the third year, would probably suffer significantly. So
Kubertan was like, Okay, I guess you better play ball

(05:03):
with Saint Louis. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
They said specifically that they were going to make the
official Olympic events in Chicago look terrible, look pitiful in comparison.
And at this time the Baron was still trying ardently,
because remember this isn't too far past eighteen ninety six,

(05:25):
still trying ardently to resurrect the modern Olympics and give
it the credibility it deserved. He wanted to avoid any controversy,
and he said he would, you know, for the greater
good of the Olympics, back down and award the location
to Saint Louis. But the problem was, first off, most

(05:47):
people in Europe at that time probably had not heard
of Saint Louis at all.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
Yeah, he was described as a second tier city, which
I think is insulting. Saint Louis is beautiful, but New
York it is not.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
I mean, I went to Saint Louis recently on some
unrelated adventures, and I got to say, it's amazing city,
amazing music, amazing barbecue if you like barbecue. But at
this time I got that arch right. But at this time,
the location there, in what they did describe as a
second tier city, was an incredible barrier to athletes, especially

(06:23):
European athletes. We have to remember this was before an
interstate system, so travel to the American Midwest was a
daunting task and almost all of the top European athletes
didn't make it, and ultimately fewer than half of the
Olympic events that year had even a single entrant who

(06:45):
was not from America.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
And I want to say I read somewhere I'm sorry
for being vague about this, folks, but that America actually
scooped up some European athletes and made them part of
the American team, or folks that had recently immigrated to
America but did not receive citizenship yet, and they were
the ones who won many of the medals. And there

(07:09):
are countries that are to this day disputing those wins
because they basically kind of sniped some of their people
and they weren't officially citizens of the United States. So
very wild West kind of Olympics here, and for more
reasons than one.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, sort of shooting of shooting from the hip right,
going winging it a little bit more than is appropriate.
Did we mention the mastermind behind this nol, James Edward Sullivan.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
No, we have not, but he's a huge part of
the story.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Okay, So James Edward Sullivan, American sports official. He was
born in eighteen sixty two. I lived until September nineteen fourteen.
He was the chief organizer of these nineteen oh four
Summer Olympics, and a lot of the terrible, terrible mistakes
that occurred fall upon his shoulders. In this situation. He's

(08:03):
the one who is putting out the threats. He's the
one who was pushing the baron to move this, and
he is one of the reasons that so many disastrous
things occurred with the actual events.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
He was the organizer of the World's Fair. Correct.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Great question, and it's important that we clarify that point.
So James Edward Sullivan is the primary organizer of the
nineteen oh four Summer Olympics, but the organizer of the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which we've also seen both ways as
either Louisiana Purchase Exhibition or Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The organizer

(08:43):
of that stuff, whatever you want to call it, was
a guy named David R. Francis. And the problem with
this was that the Saint Louis organizers treated the Olympic
Games sort of as a side show to the World's Fair.

Speaker 4 (08:59):
So the World's Fair is a big deal and very
well established at this point, and.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
There were other more popular, let's call them cultural exhibits.
We're going to be remiss if we don't mention some
of the stuff that happened in those exhibits.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, those were overshadowing the actual Olympic Games and events.
And I believe in the nineteen oh four Games the
total number of athletes was only six hundred and fifty one,
six hundred and forty five men and six women, and.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Yet for some reason it went on for like one
hundred and seventy five days, which I thought was bizarre.
Let's backtrack just a little bit too, back to the
World's Fair. So you were talking about, let's talk about
some of the things that made the World's Fair kind
of cool. You had, you know, the kind of things
you'd think about being at a fair, And on this
particular one, they had Abe Lincoln's log cabin from when
he was a boy. Okay, guess you wouldn't see that as

(09:51):
most fairs. But they also had waffle cones and you know,
new fangled contraptions and inventions, and I think this is
where like peanut butter was debut Oh.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
I'm so glad you mentioned that. Okay, yes, quick interjection.
There's a fantastic article but from serious Heats by a
guy named Robert Moss. The nineteen oh four World's Fair
a turning point for American food. There were a lot
of amazing food things that happened here. Allegedly, the first
hot dog ever was made in the nineteen or sold

(10:22):
in the nineteen oh four World's Fair, when a vendor
named Anton Futwanger was giving out sausages to people, but
they were too hot for people to hold, and so
he had his brother in law bake buns to hold
the meat, creating the world's first hot dog. It's important

(10:43):
to us through this episode, fellow ridiculous historians, to try
to find some pluses. Yeah, but so please go on
about the World's Fair. I have this list of amazing
food stuff too.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
We can keep going with that if you like. I'm
just trying to, you know, put a silver lining on
this story. I don't know, Yeah, peanut, butter's not enough
facil lying for where we're going. We might have told
us go ahead and get there. One one last little
thing about kober Ten, who, by the way, was the
guy who re established the established the International Olympic Committee.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
That was his deal, so had the bear.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
The Baron, So our third year of this event, after
fifteen hundred year lull, the stakes are high. He's kind
of strong armed into going to Saint Louis and was
so peeved at the whole thing that he actually didn't
even show up. He is quoted in saying that he
had sort of a predisposition to assuming that the quality
of the Olympiad would match the quality of the city. Yeah,

(11:34):
so kind of turning his nose up at Saint Louis here.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Let's give him another quote too. That'll get us to
I think the meat of this episode. Also, these are
the early days of the hamburger. I'm just gonna whenever
we get too into too much disturbing stuff, how about
we throw in a fun food.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Fetch sure that sounds good? Okay.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
So, in addition to his objections to the overall mediocrity
or potential for posed by the nineteen oh four Olympics,
the Baron also took disapproving note of a spectacle, very
problematic spectacle called anthropology. Days before we tell you what

(12:14):
those are, before we explore that, let's just go with
this quote, he says, referencing these as for that outrage
of charade, it will of course lose its appeal when
black men, red men, and yellow men learn to run,
jump and throw and leave the white men behind them.
Think of all the problems with that.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
Yes, but at the same time oddly forward thinking compared
to the story we're about to tell you, So.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Why don't we just launch write in it's sort of twofold.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
It's interesting because even Ben and I off air were
a little confused about who was actually hosting these anthropology days.
As it turns out it was kind of a partnership
between the Olympics and the World's Fair. So I'm a
little confused about how this guy, James Sullivan, who kind
of was the chief organizer of the Numberlympics, wasn't like
given the thumbs up from the Baron himself. But that
we haven't quite run across that particular minutia yet. But

(13:10):
here's the story. James Sullivan he believed one hundred percent
in the utter superiority of white men and wanted very
much to put on a display or a charade, as
the Baron referred to it, to demonstrate this fact. So
there was this thing that was a very strange phenomenon

(13:32):
at the beginning of the twentieth century called human zoos,
which were sort of like traveling carnivals, or it would
be like the equivalent of a freak show or a
side show, where indigenous people from places like the Philippines
or Africa would be displayed in kind of mocked up

(13:52):
versions of their traditional homes, but they would be you know,
there's images in this really great article from Timeline called
scientists staged a racist Olympics in nineteen oh four to
prove white superiority that shows people just gathered around these
picket fences and looking at children, men, women, all kind

(14:17):
of doing what they would be doing in their villages
for example. Right, So Sullivan wanted to take this a
step further, and the World's Fair itself had a mocked
up Filipino village because at the time, the Philippines was
a newly established territory of the United States, so it
was they wanted to show their dominance.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Well, yeah, he wanted to legitimize it too, legitimize this belief,
which was already at that time not considered controversial. That's
when he contacted a doctor W. J. McGee, who was
president of the American Anthropological Association and head of the
Department of Anthropology at the Saint Louis World's Fair. McGee

(15:01):
thought because indigenous people lived in harmony with nature, they
were endowed with special strength and abilities that quote, white
people simply didn't have hikes. And so he was compelled,
perhaps for some different motivations by Sullivan's concept, and they
began organizing these anthropology Days, which they sometimes referred to

(15:22):
apparently and formally as special Olympics.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, yeah, not the way we think of that term today.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
And you know, McGee did have a scientific background and
thought that he was conducting research, but he had this
preconceived notion that we mentioned earlier that indigenous people had
certain advantages, typically had to do with strength or endurance
or things like that, and he wanted to build this
hierarchical diagram of genealogy of the human species, of which

(15:55):
he thought these indigenous people were at the bottom, because
his main concern was in intellect.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
And he clearly subscribed to the concept of eugenics and
selective breeding, which was alarmingly popular or accepted in the
US at that time. So they stacked the odds against
these people. They took several people from these exhibitions, like
what you mentioned earlier in nol the exhibition featuring people

(16:21):
from the Philippines, and they said, well, you'll compete in
a special version of Olympic events on August twelfth and
thirteenth of that year of nineteen oh four. And all
their competitions that they put these people in were European
style competitions shot put, high jump, long jump, running the mile,

(16:43):
other stuff. But they didn't teach the participants. They didn't
tell them a damn thing about what they were supposed
to be doing.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah, And I mean, even I a lifelong citizen of
these United States, I don't know the rules of of
the high jump or the right form or how to
do it properly, or you know, I don't.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
I really don't.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
And then that sounds, you know, like it would be
so apparent or intuitive, and it's just not.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
There are very specific regulations too, for any professional sporting event.
So from what I understand, correct me if this is
if this is off, from what I understand, they didn't
tell them any there's obviously a language barrier. They didn't
tell them anything at most for instance, in the one
hundred yard dash or whatever, the participants just sort of

(17:30):
got the idea that they were supposed to run, but
in many cases they just saw gun fired and were like,
what dext yeah, or.

Speaker 4 (17:39):
They were just more fascinated with the weapon itself and
the loud noise that it made than what it signified,
which just seems just so ridiculous and shortsighted to me
that they would just assume that these folks would would
have the cultural knowledge of how these games work.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
That's just bonkers to me.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
They also had tennis, which is weird because tennis is
something like, look, even if you're skeptical with our explanation
here and you think, well, sure, you can just relatively
easily explain to someone the basics of something like a
high jump or one hundred yard dash. Tennis, I think
we can all agree has very specific equipment, rules and strategies.

(18:16):
This Anthropology Day's exhibition, in this event, whatever you want
to call it, was a huge failure. There's very little notice,
so there were not many people even in the crowd
to watch, and Sullivan thought at least that the games
were somewhat successful for his ulterior motive, because he said, Aha,

(18:40):
this proves that these this is a terrible word. But
to him, this proves that these quote unquote savages can't
play tennis.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
Oh cool, good, good job. That's super helpful data there.
All of these presuppositions that these guys made were based
on the kind of inherent, just thoughtless racism that we
take for granted today that most learned people would hopefully
not be party too. For example, they assumed that anyone
from a nation in Africa, for example, where spears were

(19:10):
thrown as a means of hunting and protection and what
have you, would automatically be good at throwing a javelin.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
You know, yeah, you know what it makes me think of.

Speaker 4 (19:19):
It makes me think of There's an episode of Curb
Your Enthusiasm where one of Larry's friends has adopted a
Chinese baby, and Larry immediately asked them, so, is he like,
automatically good at using chopsticks?

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (19:31):
I mean, those are horrific things to think. And of
course Larry David, we can safely say, is lampooning that
and mocking it and does not himself believe it.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
But there is another angle here because of the thing
you mentioned earlier where it's like, because these folks were
closer to nature and did these things as part of
their everyday life, it's not just a nurture thing. There's
also a nature thing here. Where they assumed that because
they had done these things in their day to day
they'd be able to immediately one to one translate them
to some kind of silly game, and that didn't happen.
For example, the folks who tried the javelin that were

(20:03):
from these nations that use spears were terrible at it.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, And I think also there's an important point we
have to make about these people. So according to that
timeline article that we cited earlier by showshoe Parks, these
people were already put in horrific conditions. So more than
twenty million people attended the nineteen oh four World's Fair. Right,

(20:27):
they saw electricity, they heard the first telephone. They also
went to see three thousand people who were placed in
these exhibitions, people from the African continent, the Asian continent,
and parts of the Americas. But the way these people
were forced to live was incredibly was like incredibly dangerous.

(20:48):
Regardless of the weather, they would be forced to wear
traditional clothing. I'm doing air quotes here, even if it
didn't suit the climate. And then, like people were supposed
to who were forced to live in that Philippine village
would be made to perform traditional rituals that were only
supposed to happen seasonally, over and over again to shock
or entertain an audience. There were appalling sanitary conditions, and

(21:13):
a lot of these people felt that they had nowhere
else to go. They were stuck in this alien environment.
And imagine being pulled out of that. So your life
is already not at its best. And then this Sullivan
guy comes with some other people, grabs you, gibbers at
you in English, hands you a javelin, and clearly thinks
that he is going to prove that not only he,

(21:36):
but anyone who looks like him is inherently better than you.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
I'm also confused that because he talks about how he
had these ideas that they would be superior physically.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
So what was he what was he trying to? What
was he getting out?

Speaker 1 (21:48):
I think it was McGee who thought he could prove
specific physical advantages, and it was Sullivan who thought he
could prove that what he saw as white people was
inherently superior.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
So I guess the reason and so confusing to me
is because the logic behind literally all of this is
utterly convoluted and bizarre.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, and a lot of that convolution and bizarre nature
comes from the fact that it's based on things that
are completely wrong.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
It's true. And here's an interesting fact too. Nate Demeyo's
article enslate. He points out that these folks, though living
in what he refers to as quasi captivity, were paid
probably not much, and obviously they were living in horrible circumstances.
But some of them even had like managers or agents.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
You know. It was almost like being a I don't.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
Know, Santa Claus impersonator or something. But the problem is
a lot of these folks that were in these human
zoos were never fully able to assimilate into American culture, right,
and they were kind of held back by here, we're
giving you an opportunity to not really live but just barely.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, And for McGee, the body of data that he
wanted to collect from this to prove his wack a
do notion of racial hierarchies and certain inherent advantages or disadvantages,
he didn't get it. We don't know if that body
of data ever existed.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
They did give it another go, though there was a
second attempt at this unconnected to the Olympic Games, where
they did try to teach them the sports. You think
that would have been front of mine the first time,
but they just seem to have missed that entirely. Yeah,
how that one go? Did that any better results?

Speaker 1 (23:37):
No?

Speaker 2 (23:38):
No?

Speaker 1 (23:38):
No?

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
It turns out if something if you base something on
a terrible idea and nonsense the first time you try it,
it'll still be a terrible idea, nonsense the second time.
While we're at this point, I just want to mention
another another fun food fact. I'm still right okay. So

(24:03):
apparently at the nineteo four World's Fair, when it was hot,
there were very few people interested in this hot tea
offered by a guy named Richard Blechton who was the
tea commissioner in the India pavilion. And this guy got
so desperate that he decided to pour his tea over ice,
and supposedly, according to legend, he invented iced tea.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Well then the drink.

Speaker 4 (24:28):
Yeah, not the rapper, not the lyrics, only iced tea
invented iced tea?

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah? Where do we go from here, Ben.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
I guess well we should also say that, you know,
I think we did mention. I hope he established that
the concept of human zoos was not unique at all. Right,
you mentioned earlier it wasn't unique at all to the
World's Fair. It existed in other parts of the world,
in Europe as well. It is better for history, of course,

(25:00):
that this proved to be a failure. There were some
other first that occurred during the Olympics, so in some
ways it wasn't a complete disaster. It was the first
time boxing, freestyle wrestling, the kathlon, and dumbbells made their
debut in the modern Olympics, right, and luckily James Sullivan

(25:21):
would go down in history as the fool he was,
which I consider a positive aspect absolutely how so, because
he was clearly and categorically proven wrong espousing a belief
that was both offensive and incredibly common at the time.
So I consider that a win for our species overall.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
Yeah, Well, in the spirit of staying ridiculous, because while
this racial Shenanigan's is absolutely ridiculous, it's also pretty depressing
and quite dark when you think about it.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
The idea of human zoos.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
It reminds me of that the episode we did about
the real human skull that was found in the diorama
at a museum and the idea of grave robbing these
indigenous people and taking them back to Europe and taxidermizing
them culture. Oh, we haven't even mentioned the fact that
a lot of this attitude was entirely based on the
idea of imperialism of the United States. It was a

(26:14):
stat you know, we had we had gotten this territory
of the Philippines, we had this Filipino reservation, right, and
it was this idea of showing our cultural dominance.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
I would say it's I would say it's ultimately descended
from the European ideals that the Americans just they didn't
invent it.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
No, no, no, for sure, but this is a really clear
example of, you know, trying to put that on full display.
So let's let's let's end with one funny story.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
I advanced to end with food facts.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Okay, that's fine. So the next to last thing.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Two folks don't leave completely depressed.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
It was kind of depressing too, but in a much
more lighthearted, funny way. So the marathon at the Olympics
themselves was just utterly disastrous. Uh.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
The winner a guy named Thomas Hicks.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
He finished in absurdly long three hours and twenty eight minutes,
and that is because the conditions were just abhorrent. It
was ninety degrees they it was on a road that
was covered with dust, and I think according to history
dot com, eighteen of the thirty two folks that were
racing had to pull out because of sheer exhaustion. Somebody

(27:21):
got a stomach hemorrhage and nearly died.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
William Garcia of California collapsed and had to be hospitalized
because dust had coated his esophagus and ripped his stomach lining.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Oh my god. Yeah, I'm glad we're ending with the
food facts.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
So yeah, Thomas Hicks, he won with that ridiculously slow time,
but only because his assistance kept feeding him doses of
eggs and strychnine, egg whites and strych nine and brandy
to keep him on his feet.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, for the at the ten mile mark, they had
to start taking care of him. He had begged them
for a drink and they refused. They spun his mouth
out instead. Strychnine in small doses was common as a
stimulant at the time, and I know, weird it sounds,
but there were no rules about performance enhancing drugs. But
he was the ultimate winner. But did you hear about

(28:14):
Fred Laws. He's my favorite guy of Fred Laws. Okay,
so this guy Fred Laws LRZ. He leads the starters
from the time they fired the gun, but by the
first mile, Thomas Hicks hedges ahead, and Lores at the
nine mile mark started getting these crazy stomach cramps, and

(28:37):
so he decided to hitch a ride in an accompanying
car and he waved at his fellow competitors as he ran,
and then he rode in the car for eleven miles
and then one of Hicks's handlers, one of the strych
nine egg white guys, saw Lawyers and ordered him off
the course, but Lare said eh, and keV running and

(28:58):
finished with the time of under three hours, and the
crowd went nuts, and they were like yay an American one.
And then someone I think President Theodore Roosevelt's daughter placed
a wreath on Lours's head and was about to put
the actual metal around his neck when somebody finally busted him.
The cheers turned to booze, and we don't know if

(29:20):
Laws was sincere when he said this, but he smiled
and said, I never intended to accept the honor. I
finished only for the sake of a joke. And it's like, really,
that's how you let it get that close to a
gold medal. I don't know, man, I don't really buy it.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
It's a good story though, But Hicks.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Does become the winner, right yep, because he didn't hop
in a car for eleven miles.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
That's right, he hopped on his feet.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
Well, I'm picturing him vomiting constantly, clutching his guts, screaming
for water, Yeah, screaming for water, having his little toadies
pouring some disgusting mixture down his throat.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
That's how you typically picture a marathon runner, right, right,
that's the glory day's picture. So, as we said, there
were a lot of food facts that we're pointing to
when we entered more difficult parts of this story. I
want to give a little bit of a gray lining
here because some of those stories, while inspiring, pretty easy

(30:19):
to debunk. If you were writing an email now about
iced tea again to drink, the truth is that it
had been around for decades beforehand. Yeah, I guess if
you're the one that got the booth at the World's Fair,
you might get the credit in history. But thankfully we've
got sites like Serious Eats that do a great job
of debunking that stuff. What did they say about the

(30:40):
actual origins of ice tea?

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Man?

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, the actual origins of iced tea, which are interesting
on their own, occur at least by eighteen sixty eight,
probably way before eighteen sixty eight's like three decades before
the World Fair. A widely circulated newspaper piece notes that
ice tea with lemon juice is said to be a
popular and healthy drink, and has instructions for making it,

(31:05):
and it's also numerous cookbooks. So I think a lot
of the marketing of World's Fair stuff is just that marketing,
and we have to be careful because marketing, you know,
is a glitzy version of the truth.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
Do you think it wasn't really Abe Lincoln's boyhood cabin
that was there? Just some sort of replica?

Speaker 2 (31:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
It also reminds me, you know, all those old medieval counterfeitters,
like a Canterbury Tale, who would run around.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
With fake reliquaries or partner's tale.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, like the partner, But we do believe it is
important for us to acknowledge these things and realize that
in nineteen oh four at the World's Fair, people believe
they were on the cusp of scientific innovation. You know
that they were on the bleeding edge of technology, and

(31:54):
in some ways they were, but their own preconceptions, their
own prejudices, their own pre existing notions, limited the scope
of their vision. And hopefully that's something that we can
learn from in the modern day. Like I'm stretching to
make it a little bit of a parable.

Speaker 4 (32:11):
Now, you're doing a good job, Ben, You like it,
I do. It's a good way to frame it. Yeah,
but there you have it. To quote Robert Lamb of
stuff to blow your mind our sister podcast.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
So yeah, I think we leave it there, right.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Ben, I agreed. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
We would like to thank you for listening. We've been
doing more and more sports related stuff recently.

Speaker 4 (32:32):
Have you noticed that, which is weird because I don't
think either one of us are into sports, and it's
possible that that shows in the episode.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
But we come to it with honest hearts.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Honest hearts honest hearts and as fans of history if
nothing else. So thank you for checking out the show
and taking the strange journey with us. Thank you to
our super producer, Casey Pegram, and thank you to Eve's Jeffcoat,
who was our research assistant for this episode.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
If you want to reach us online, you can check
us out on social media at Ridiculous History at Instagram
and Twitter and Facebook, or you can join our Facebook community,
the Ridiculous Historians. There's always all kinds of fun conversation
and memory going on there. If you don't want to
do any of that, you can write us an email
at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com and I think we
did not yet.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Thank our pal Alex Williams.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Who composed this to Thanks Alex.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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