Free Republic

Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest athletes in history and the victim of what many considered a century-old Olympic injustice, has been restored as the sole winner of the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Games. Thorpe, who excelled at a dozen or more sports, had dominated his two events at the 1912 Games in Stockholm but was stripped of his medals after it emerged that he had briefly played professional baseball before his Olympic career. American officials, in what historians considered a blend of racism and a fanatical devotion to the idea of amateurism, had been among the...

On Friday night, police say Midas, 33, of Weatherly, went to the police station in the small town of Lansford, where he was a part-time officer, and took ammunition and an unmarked police car before he drove to the home of another off-duty officer and took him hostage. Midas then drove Ondrus to nearby Jim Thorpe, where a struggle began in the tourist town of Jim Thorpe, about 70 miles north of Philadelphia. Midas shot himself in the head, police say. He died early Saturday at a hospital, according to Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim, who ruled Midas' death a...

Established coaches in the elite Eastern schools like Army, Harvard, Pennsylvania and Yale failed to embrace the pass. It was also a gamble. Passes couldn’t be thrown over the line on five yards to either side of the center. An incomplete pass resulted in a 15-yard penalty, and a pass that dropped without being touched meant possession went to the defensive team. “Because of these rules and the fact coaches at that time thought the forward pass was a sissified type of play that wasn’t really football, they were hesitant to adopt this new strategy,” says Kent Stephens, a historian...