1904 Olympics and Chicanery - Episode 56

In 1904, the city of St. Louis won the bid to house one of the new Olympic games. In this episode, Kara is diving into the wild and whacky events that took place in these games including women racing to win a pound of tea and marathon runners being denied water and only give alcohol and one dude even being poisoned with strychnine. 

The 1904 Olympics was one for the history books before you know it, everything will fly off the rails. So sit back and relax with a sports drink of your choice... like brandy and enjoy the chicanery. 

For more details and notes be sure to hit up The Day's Dumpster Fire website!

If you find this episode fascinating, check out some of these other episodes that Kara and Ed have put together of a similar vein:

Episode 14. Boston Molasses Flood

Episodes 23 and 24. I love the Smell of Lead (the story of leaded gasoline)

Episodes 59-62. Prohibition

Hey before you go!

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Then with about seven miles to go, so three miles later ish, Hicks was given a combo drink containing strychnine, brandy, and egg whites to keep him going.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Strychnine, uh-huh, brandy and egg whites. And eggs.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

That's how you win a race. Hello, everybody. This is your day's dumpster fire, where we don't celebrate humanity's successes, but its most fantastic failures. I am Kara, your host, and I have Ed with me as ever, my co-host. How are you doing, Ed?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

So far, so good. We've made it this far in the intro without things crashing.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

That's a lie. But the audience doesn't have to know that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah, no, it's just uh like we decided to really change up our format. You know, hopefully you heard a funny little clip from somewhere in the episode, and then we decided just instead of having us bounce back and forth between us for the intro, we're just like, you know what, let's just dive straight into it. Yeah, shortly after that, like everything just crashed. So it's a uh yeah, it's part of the course of the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

It's just fine. We're used to it by now. In fact, it's not a good episode unless something does go completely haywire. But I'm excited. I'm excited because we kind of have a slightly different format of a show. Um, as you just heard, the intro is a little different. And hopefully uh we've got a decent palette cleanser. I thought Waterworld, uh episode 55 was gonna be a pretty good palette cleanser, and I think it was for the most part. It was your traditional, like, hey, let's throw a bunch of money at something, let's find an A-less actor, let's find a really good director, let's throw even more money at it. And then when it's all said and done, throw a bit more money at it and watch it not work. So go check that one out. And uh it's really a kind of a follow-up. Well, I don't want to say a follow-up, it's more of a uh a sigh of relief from episodes uh what is it, 52, 53, 54, all about the Donner Party situation.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yep, nice and light. Um, and then I chose to do something a little nice and light as well, give everybody a respite.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Um for those of you who know me, I'm a huge Olympics fan. I I every four years, actually every two years, because I I watched the Winter Olympics and then I watched the Summer Olympics. Uh I I love the Olympics, so this topic is very near and dear to me. And uh this one is gonna be kind of funny because the last time I was in Missouri, I tripped over one of the uh anchors that was used to uh hold down some tents from this uh Olympic Games, but you did some more research into this, it just wasn't one massive dumpster fire. I feel like every event had its own.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

It's interesting because the event as a whole was a dumpster fire, but there were some successes mixed in. You can't take that away from the athletes. Um, but I actually I chose to do this episode because my um my brother-in-law, Kevin, wanted me to do it. And um, as big of a history nerd as I am, I didn't know much about it. So he was like, Oh, you gotta do this, and I looked it up and I was like, Oh, this is hilarious. So here we are. Uh, we're gonna be doing the 1904 Olympic Games, the third Olympic modern Olympic Games ever held. And considering it's only number three, there's there's going to be a lot to learn here.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, that's one of the things that always impressed me about the Olympics, because like even today, when you watch them on television, what is there like 190 somewhat events?

SPEAKER_01 4:06

And something like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Yeah, it's like how do you organize that? Could you imagine trying to be the person that would have to organize like how do you photograph all this? How do you how do you establish living quarters? How do you feed everybody? How do you set up each each game or each venue? It's uh it's so funny because a lot of countries, uh especially smaller ones, they get millions and millions of dollars from the IOC, but then like 10 years after the Olympics have moved on to somewhere else, like a lot of those exhibits, or not exhibits, but those venues are just like grown over, fallen apart, not used anymore. But it makes billions of dollars for the couple of weeks that it's around. And uh I mean, that's today with you know modern technology and everything. Going back to 1904, where they didn't even really have much use of a telephone back then, I don't think, let alone uh cell phones and email and and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

It could be argued that they didn't really need it.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

True. At least that's I guess they could just get everybody in one area with a guy with a megaphone and be like, okay, guys, this is how we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Well, when you pair it up with a World's Fair, um, it seems like a good idea. Yes. In theory, on paper.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong? But I think that the ancient Greeks, uh they were the first ones to figure it out, weren't they? Like how to do it, and then they didn't have anything back then.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Um, the ancient Greeks, it was actually a religious practice.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Oh, like the Mayans.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Oh, really? That I did not know.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Yeah, so I guess I'll start. Chapter one, the Olympic Games. The Olympics originated in ancient Greece. The first written evidence we have of the ancient Olympics date back to 776 BCE. These games were generally held for religious purposes as our tribute and celebration to Zeus that included feasts or ceremonies for the god of thunder. Um, so yeah, so oftentimes these games weren't just held for you know athletes athletes or athletic sake. Like, yes, they wanted to celebrate the human body, they were super into that, but also it was a uh a religious ceremony, the more you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah, I always thought it was more like just a because Greek Greek Greece was never really like one cohesive country back then. No city states, yeah, city states all over the place, and so then they would just like they would just send people from all over just to compete and bragging rights and stuff like that. Whereas like I guess you could look at ancient Greece as kind of like a microcosm for the world today. Because like you have all these little mini nations, whereas like now we have these mega nations, but I it it never occurred to me that they would all just look at Zeus and hey, we're gonna go run around on this field throwing spears at each other bucked naked. Hope you're happy, Zeus.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Thanks. Here you go, Zeus. It kind of reminds me of um, because I've been doing a lot of research on Mesoamerica this summer, and the Mayan ball game was also a religious practice, and I did not know that, but it reminded me of the Olympics. Wow. Yeah. Huh.

unknown 7:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

That's a weird ball game where they like hit it with their hips through that hoop kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Yeah, they can't use their arms or their legs.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

That is weird.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I'm gonna have the kids try it. So the ancient Olympics would be practiced until about 393 CE when the Roman Emperor Theodosius I claimed that the games were a celebration of paganism and in direct opposition of the emperor's orthodox Christian values, making them in opposition to Rome's values. So he was like, no more Olympics, this is dumb. And then he nixed it. So that's why they stopped. And 1466 years later, Greek businessman and philanthropist Evangelos Zappas was inspired by a poem written by, I'm gonna try really hard. Are you ready? Panayotis Saltsis. I'm so sorry if I butchered that.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah, I think uh uh Panayotas uh I think uh I would say that's close enough for government work.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Perfect. And he wrote about the ancient Greek games in his poetry. Eventually, after reading all of this stuff and he was super inspired, Zapis organized his own games in 1859, and he started a brand new, not so new, kind of new Greek tradition on a local level. So these new Greek games drew the attention of a surgeon, educator, and magistrate from Britain named William Penny Brooks. Brooks believed that physical activity was a key to the better life in mind and spirit. He was very much um a guy who wanted everybody to be healthy because he felt that that would help your body and soul, which I can see it.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah, it's not wrong. Yeah, it's not wrong at all. When what time period was this? It was this.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

1850s, 1860s.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, early early f early sixties, I think. His goal was to improve the lives of the people who lived in his community of Much Winlock, which is such a fun name. When he saw what they were doing in Greece, he decided to implement it where he lived in Wenlock. And that's in Britain, in London, close to London. Brooks would hold his first games in Winlock in 1866. The Wenlock version of the Olympics began with opening ceremonies held in two taverns with a parade that included flower petals and singing children. These are so and it's just the the Britishness is amazing. The events held were traditional Greek events such as track and field, as well as some notable additions. These included a blindfolded wheelbarrow race, an old woman's race for a pound of tea, and a pig chase.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

I would actually go to Britain. Like if I was going to Britain, just like be a tourist, like some annoying American, I would go there for everything else, but I'm not leaving it until I see the pig chase.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

The the pig chase is I really liked the uh the old woman's race for a pound of tea.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

I would love to see a bunch of old ladies just running for tea.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

I'm surprised they don't have the uh the rolling the cheese down the hill.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I think that's a newer, no, maybe not. I don't remember the original.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

I don't know the the the complete story behind it, but it is it is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

So watch because people are just I'm surprised nobody's died.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

I think there's been a couple who almost died, but yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Britain has the gall to make fun of Americans.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

And um to go completely out of tradition here, they also held cricket and football events or soccer. Um, the reason it's out of tradition is because they thought it was, especially in the late 1800s, they thought adding any game with a ball was just oh, that's just not civilized at all. It's bad culture.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

And I thought too a lot of those sports were for betting. Cricket and soccer and stuff like that. Like they were kind of there's a huge betting scene, which in Victorian England was considered very immoral and proper. In fact, that's one of the reasons why biology came around is because it did deal with chance, but in a more scientific way, a more respectable way of dealing with chance. Well, so maybe that maybe that's why they or just because they had a ball.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

I I think probably both. I'm gonna guess both. Despite their initial success in Britain, the one lock games began to dwindle in popularity over the years and slowly fell out of fashion. This was likely due to other sporting organizations forming in Britain. So, you know, professional soccer, cricket, the games that nobody actually thought would be popular, maybe rugby. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Like the tea chase thing that's I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

To me, that just seems that's my favorite. I'd watch that.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's just you know it's on ESP and the Yojo.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Has to be. They have professional tag, they have to have the tea chase or the national putt putt competition of cornhole, all the things. Despite the loss of interest in the Olympic Games, Brooks continued to champion champion in international games throughout the 1880s. So he felt words are hard. He felt that it was super important that the Olympic Games were a worldwide event, and he thought it would really help um, you know, spread the love of sports. He wrote his own articles and he had opinions that he wrote out and had all of that stuff published in papers locally, and then they started to spread throughout Britain. Finally, in 1890, Brooks would have dinner with a young French baron with very similar ideals in mind when it came to the value of sports. Um his name was Pierre Baron de Cubertin, and he said about sports for me, sport is a religion with church, dogma, ritual. So he was very passionate about his sporting events.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Cuberin was born into the French aristocracy on January 1st, uh, 1863. The youngest of four children, Pierre grew up to love history and philosophy. He attended school at the law faculty of the political sciences and spent his early twenties focusing on education reform in France. Yep. He was five feet three inches tall, with piercing dark eyes, and always wore a very respectable mustache.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

That yes, that that was a requirement for the time period.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

It was, and his mustache was rather fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

So I highly suggest looking at it. The Baron would frequently visit Great Britain in his quest for education reform, looking for inspiration and various methodologies practiced there. He had a great respect for British education and their education system. He wanted to implement some of their strategies in France. And it was during this time researching physical education in Britain that Kruberton met William Brooks looking for insight in 1890.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

So basically, this guy was like France's first PE wannabe coach.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Um he he would spend his early 20s not knowing really what he wanted to do. He was kind of floating around looking for purpose type of thing.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Well, at five foot three, there's not much you really can do.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Especially if you do love sports. I mean, sorry, buddy, but you Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Your your your aspirations of the uh NFL or the NBA are uh yeah, that's that's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

No, no, really, truly. Um, but I do give him credit for wanting to uh spread the importance of PE in France. And I also have to respect a Frenchman who looks to the British like, hey, you're actually doing something cool here. I gotta give him credit for that too.

unknown 15:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Uh Brooke shared his ideas and passions regarding the Olympics with Cooper Thom. Very much so. In fact, he talked about the Olympics more than any other topic or idea he had about PE. So it went from, hey, what are your ideas or thoughts about physical education in schools? And he went, Oh, how about these Olympics?

unknown 16:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

You know, this is the guy, and everybody has this guy over like some distant uncle or whatever. Every Thanksgiving dinner, everybody gets together and everybody is like talking about oh, what so-and-so is doing, and this person's in college, and this person just had a baby. And then you've got that uncle that is just so infatuated with sports, and all they're going on is like, oh, just see what happened. The New York Jets. No, oh well, you know, uh, this, this, is this, is that yeah. And then that it like completely derails the conversation in a direction that nobody wants it to go because nobody nobody really cares. It's just that one uncle that just is never shuts up about this one particular sport.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

I could say that Brooks could be that guy. I could see it. But also I have to give him some respect for the persistence of the idea of an international Olympics, because without him, we probably wouldn't have them today.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, there's a note about it. But I just feel like he's the guy that just would never stop talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

100%. In fact, he shared his dream of the International Olympics with got great gusto. He was so excited about it. Uh and Cubertant was was listening in polite agreement, very into the conversation. Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. Good idea, good idea.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Um the first time in in human history where two bros are brow out over a bro sport.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Uh, pretty much. And and you know, he ended the conversation with, Well, why don't you come to the events and come see what they are? So Coubertin did. He went to the events at Winlock and watched blindfolded Weird Racing and uh ladies chasing teabags or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Chasing teabags.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Oh, that sounds so wrong. And that was it. Coubertin was convinced that an international Olympic Games was something that the world truly needed. And like Brooks, he began working towards making that dream a reality. On November 25th, 1892, Coubertin attended a meeting in Paris, France with the Union des Sports Athletic or Athleticus or whatever. I can't French is hard. French is hard. Anyway, he brought up the idea of the International Olympics saying, Let us export rowers, runners, and fencers. There is the free trade of the future, and on the day when it is introduced within the walls of old Europe, the cause of peace will have received a new and mighty ally. Like he really laid it on. Despite his efforts, in 1892, the committee was not convinced. However, in 1894, Couvertin went to a conference on international sport speaking in front of delegates and organizations from nine different countries. So not just the French, but nine places, nine countries, and finally it was agreed to award the revival revival of the Olympic Games on an international scale. We're getting somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Was Germany around at this time?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah. No. It would have been just forming. Germany was just forming. They were a very young country. So maybe.

unknown 19:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I honestly did not see what those nine countries were, but I'm sure we can look.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Oh, watch. It's like Antarctica.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Something really off the wall.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Uh yeah, Greenland. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Have the Danes.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Zimbabwe, bobsledding team. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

It was decided that the first modern Olympic Games would be held in Athens, Greece, in April of 1896. Only seemed fitting. I can understand that. A committee was put together to bring the games to life in Athens. It was called the International Olympic Committee. And they were. Headquartered in Paris with Coubertant as the president. So originally the IOC was in Paris, and then they actually moved it to Switzerland during the First World War, where it remains today.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah, I guess it's tough to have a uh a giant Olympic committee when, you know. There's a war war going on. Yeah, when there's a world war going on, especially when the two major countries slugging it out was uh Germany and and France. It's like, yeah. Yeah it's just kind of sketchy. Let's just move it to Swiss where they at least have good chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

And they generally don't partake in wars, at least at this time period.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Yeah. For the Swiss. Yeah, they they had their run in the uh Napoleonic.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Yeah, they were like, after that, I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

And they realized they sucked at it and then they never did it again.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

I mean, good for them. They know what they're good at and they know what they're bad at.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think you said the same thing when we were on the uh Napoleonic wars or the Napoleon episodes. You're like, hey, you know, at least they they faced up and they owned that yeah, we suck at this and moved on to something else.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

At least I'm consistent. Uh the committee decided that if successful, the Olympics would be held every four years and cities would be chosen to host, not countries. This was decided to make it easier logistically to choose locations, and it gave more legal and financial flexibility to host games as opposed to a federally run program, so it makes sense. The 1896 games in Athens hosted 12 countries and were in overall success. Events held there included track and field, cycling, swimming, gymnastics, traditional wrestling, weightlifting, fencing, shooting, tennis, and the first marathon run inspired by the Greek legend of the Battle of Marathon. Um, I did mention it in our 300 episode. Episode 22, Battle of Thermopylae. Check it out. Anyway, uh due to the success of the Athens Olympics, the IOC agreed to have the next Olympic Games in 1900. Paris was chosen as the host city because it was the city that would be holding the World's Fair that same year. And they were thinking more people would attend if it were in conjunction with that event. Makes sense on paper.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

I feel like you're gonna be saying a lot of that. On paper.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

On paper. It makes sense. But also there are some things we're not on paper. On paper. Anyway, there were just some bad ideas thrown around. We're gonna get there. Unfortunately, unfortunately, the Paris Olympics in 1900 proved to be a failure. To keep up with the fair, events were scheduled over a five-month period. In contrast, today, they last roughly 17 days.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Whoa. Okay, wait, so the Olympics lasted for five months.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yep. Woo! Yep. Can you imagine that?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

That's that's some long sponsorship deals.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

It's a it's a long, long time for the Olympics, especially when the average is 17 days. The long schedule meant that the quality of events dropped and felt like they dragged on for a lot longer than they needed to be. They also became overshadowed by fair activities. Event venues in Paris were inadequate for Olympic vents in 1900 without precedence or experience guiding organizers, it makes sense. Track and field events were held on hills in the mud and in the grass, making conditions very slippery or sticky for athletes. The hammer throw events often resulted in hammers getting stuck in trees after they were thrown. Swimming was held in the Sin River, the Seine River, which had a very strong current, making the swimmers a lot faster than humanly possible, affecting times and records to date.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Well, and and then what was it at uh the past Olympics where the swimmers were getting like E. coli infections from the CEN.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Having swimming held at the CIN is not historically, I can tell you right now, it's not exactly the best idea.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Parisians have been dumping their bodily waste in that river for hundreds of years. Like, I would not have anything to do with that river.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

No, but I will say, at least this past Olympics that was held in Paris was better than this Paris Olympics.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Oh, because we're we're gonna keep going. Hurdles were made of broken telephone poles uh that had a very difficult time staying stable or safe for that matter. Even the marketing and scheduling for these Olympics had problems for both spectators and athletes. Even officials were plagued with scheduling issues. Some people were completely unaware that they were even competing when they were called upon. They had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

No issues with the uh the pole vaulter. I don't think pole vaulting. His body, his body, a certain part of his body catching the uh that rod on the way down.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Uh thankfully not, pole vaulting was not an event until later, or else I could totally imagine the issues. Um women competed in the 1900 Games for the first time. However, this was never approved by the IOC. They competed in sailing, lawn tennis, and golf. And because the women were never official in 1900, in the eyes of the IOC at this time, it made record keeping very difficult. For example, today the first woman to win the first Olympics in an Olympic event can be attributed to three different women in three different events depending on who you ask. Which is fine, but it can get very confusing. Oh Lord. On top of this, there were several athletic events that were seen as unofficial in terms of the Olympics that ran alongside official ones, such as cricket and soccer. For all its messes, ball games, exactly. For all its messes, there were some successes at the Paris Olympics. Archery, rowing, and equestrial events were considered official for the first time. The American athletes swept the floor with track and field events, and that drew the attention of Kubernetes and the IOC. So chapter two, Tug of War. After the Paris Olympics in 1900, the IOC decided to go to America and host the 1904 Games in the city there, in a city there. Some organizers felt that New York City would be the best choice. At the time, New York was considered the city that represented the U.S. best in terms of culture and reputation. Others showed interest in awarding the Olympics to Chicago due to their success in the 1893 World's Fair and their centralized location. That makes sense. New York proved to be uninterested on their end to host the Olympic Games. Most of the requests to them went unanswered and completely ignored. New York was like, no. Chicago put in their official application with interest from officials there, and out of left field, St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri showed enormous interest in aggressive campaigning on their end. They were so persistent, the organizer organizers accepted their application despite not being in the running originally.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

I wonder why they wanted it so much.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

We'll talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

In the end, the IOC chose Chicago to host the 1904 Games, publicly announcing their choice in 1901. At the same time, the World's Fair location was up for grabs. This fair would not only be a world's fair with international involvement, but it was also a centennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Wanting to outdo Chicago and Paris, the governor of St. Louis, Missouri, David R. Francis, and other Missouri politicians lobbied for the fair to be hosted in St. Louis. The Missouri efforts were immensely successful, and St. Louis would be the new host of the 1903 World's Fair. So while Francis did not win the award to host the Olympics, he did win the fair. He would leverage this swim to get everything he wanted in his city of St. Louis. David Francis was an assertive, ambitious, and pragmatic man. He was a big dude too. The 51-year-old governor got to work in creating the largest world's fair anybody has ever seen with the goal of putting St. Louis on the map alongside Chicago and New York City. The chosen space for the fairgrounds was 1,272 acres encompassing Forest Park and the Washington University campus after the construction.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

That's a fairly big chunk of land.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

That's pretty big. That's a lot of land. After the construction and preparations were finished for the fair, it took over 10,000 laborers to build. Francis appointed St. Louis architect Isaac S. Taylor as director of works in charge of architecture and construction. And it was a huge project. It was massive. Over 1,500 buildings were constructed just for this event. And the area's infrastructure had to be revamped to hold the expected amount of people.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

And this is just for the World's Fair?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

This is just for the World's Fair. This does not count the Olympic. Francis knew that he would need more money and more time to pull this off. He was initially awarded$5 million from the U.S. government for fair preparations. He took out an additional$5 million in bonds from the state of Missouri and then raised another$5 million from private donors, bringing his total to about$15 million. Moving quickly, Francis applied for an extension, asking to hold the exposition in 1904 instead of 1903, with promises of grandeur and excellence for the U.S. The extension was accepted in late 1901 with a new date of the exposition to be held in the summer of 1904. This one-year delay allowed Francis to make his move for the Olympic Games despite the Chicago announcement. All right, you with me?

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Yeah, I think I'm I'm kind of saying where this guy's going.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Okay. For the director of physical culture, Francis appointed the head and founder of the amateur athletics union, James E. Sullivan. The AAU was the largest, most powerful sporting organization in the US at the time. This would be like the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, all rolled into one type of deal. Like this is the biggest sporting organization in the world.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

This is where it's like it just encompasses everything.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Where like when you go to a uh you go to a sporting event and they lift shirts, it just says go sports. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Yes. I'll take it.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Half naked, fat manda, yay, go sports. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

As the head of the AAU, Sullivan was prominent in the sports world with a huge amount of influence on all things organized sports. Standing up five feet ten inches tall with a very athletic build, Sullivan was just as pragmatic and assertive as Francis, if not more. He took his role very seriously in organizing the fair. And he had a very nationalistic attitude of wanting America to be the greatest spectacle in the world. So he was very like, go US, we have to win every event. We have to be the world's greatest country, that type of thing.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

And I bet uh but the Sullivan and Francis, these two probably had epic arguments.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

They it was actually Coubertin and Sullivan that got it.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

That butted heads really bad. They were famously uh at odds all the time with this attitude emanating from both men. They announced that the AAU would emanating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Emanating.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Whatever. They announced that the AAU would hold their championship sporting events at St. Louis World's Fair, placing their sporting event in direct competition with the Chicago Olympics in 1904. So you had the country's largest sporting organization saying they're going to hold their championship at the same time as the Olympics.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yeah. That's a move right there.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Yeah. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Olympic organizers were struggling, lacking financial backing and civilian support. The committee began to run behind on planning and communicating with the IOC. And Coubertin suffered greatly. In the eyes of the IOC, it was like, you guys, what are you guys doing? Look at these guys over here in St. Louis just being all crazy and putting their stuff together. And what do what are you doing here?

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yeah, they're like go sports. And then you guys are like, what I mean, in L Fairness, like I think Chicago was still trying to rebuild a little bit from their whole city burning down not too long ago. Because that was what, 18, late 1880s?

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah, but then they had the World's Fair of 93, so it couldn't have been that hard.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Oh, yeah, that's true. In other words, it sounded like they got that, and then cool. They didn't really follow up with any more development. Whereas like Francis and Sullivan here, they're just going gangbusters on this. Like they just assume that it's going to be held there no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Yeah, that's kind of the attitude that Francis and Sullivan took. And I think in Chicago, what had happened was the officials wanted the games, but they didn't get as much public support as they thought they would, so they didn't get as much money.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Um, that's kind of what I think happened, but I can read more into it. Due to those difficulties in Chicago, paired with the World's Fair and the AAU announcement out there in Missouri, the IOC finally agreed to move the Olympic Games to St. Louis. Despite the IOC's public announcement to move it, however, privately and later publicly, Pierre Descubertins had a lot of concerns about the move. He was not confident that the Olympic Games would be successful when held alongside a World's Fair in a remote location in comparison to Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Fair.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Like St. Louis is a uh is a very it's it's a much, much smaller city compared to Chicago. And Chicago was kind of like the capital of the US in the Midwest. Like it was the warden of the Midwest kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Couberton was concerned that like in Paris the games would be outshone with little participation from athletes and spectators. And when he was asked later, he stated, I had a sort of presentiment that the Olympiad would match the mediocrity of the town. Oh, jeez. Oh he was he had a bad taste in his mouth.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Oh man, he must have like gotten food poisoning from a restaurant there or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Just well, like I said too, he uh he did not get along with Sullivan. He did not like him.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

They fought a lot. So even before like this transition, it was just a bad deal.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah, I could I could see the uh the French American interactions not going well there.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Sullivan just seems I don't like Sullivan.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah. Was he just too over the top?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

No, you'll by the time we're done with this, you won't like him either.

unknown 35:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

In 1902, it was officially announced that the Olympics were moving to St. Louis from Chicago. Beginning in March of 1903, Pierre Descubertin pulled away from any kind of organizational responsibilities that came with the St. Louis organizers, resolving that he would not attend the games in 1904 and he wouldn't even answer letters from St. Louis. He was he'd no more.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

The founder of the modern Olympics is not going to attend his own games.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Correct. President of the Gaio C was not going to attend these games. Wanted nothing to do with them.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Dang.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

He was out. After the transition to St. Louis and the departure of Duke Coupertin, the organization of the Olympic Games was given to James Sullivan, and the first events would be held on July first, nineteen oh four.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

All right. Chapter three, Hurdles. Amongst the chaos of the World's Fair and the news of the International Olympics being held there, a young photographer in Buffalo, New York, caught wind of the events, making a name for themselves after a 1902 piece in a local paper about a couple who committed suicide by driving off a cliff at a rock quarry. This journalist felt that the events in St. Louis would be a huge opportunity to add to their portfolio and open a studio in New York City.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Not Buffalo.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

I know. But I promise it's it's relevant. I like this person. So I wanted to give them a good intro. With that, the photographer packed their bags and headed to St. Louis. Upon their arrival, however, no one wanted to give them a press pass to the fair because she was a woman. Jessie Tarbox Beals would persistently work for a job or a press pass for entry into the exhibit exhibition. Even after being declined repeatedly, she would keep asking. She described herself as a gifted with the ability to hustle and eventually gained her pass to take photos at the exhibition. Beals became the first female new photographer in the c news photographer in the country in 1902, and now she was the first woman to cover a story this major. She spent the next six months at the fair and the Olympics taking pictures. She went seven days a week from morning till night, often seen running around the fairgrounds in a poof-shoulder blouse and a skirt, hauling a 40-pound camera around wherever she went. After she got the job to work as a photographer at the fair, news articles in St. Louis were released with headlines like woman gets permit to take pictures at the fair. Fields became a fair celebrity in her own right and would take over 5,000 pictures while she was there.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Okay, so photography back then is not what it was today or is today. Those cameras, like you said, they weighed like 40 pounds, and then they would insert like these glass plates, and then like when you expose that glass plate, then you would have to take it back and expose it. And for her to take 5,000 pictures, I bet you anything that was probably close to 5,000 hours worth of work trying to process those and and all that. Meanwhile, I could photograph a wedding with 5,000 pictures in an evening. Like that's dang. That is a lot. Not to mention she had to probably supply all the chemicals and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah, she probably processed them after later. Well, no, it was for the news, so that's a lie. She was probably processing at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Uh-huh. Probably working all day taking pictures, and then she was up all night. Whereas like a male photographer would probably have like five lackeys that would do that stuff for him.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah. So just as we go through the story, just picture in the background this Beals lady with this giant camera just popping around in the background all over the place. Because that's the one she was. She was like a celebrity in her own right, taking all these pictures, all these events, all these uh attractions of all of it.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

That's wild. And I can I can visualize that. Like at the uh Scottsdale Open Golf Match, you'll see that where uh, you know, there's 18 holes of golf. You can't put cameras at every single hole, but you would have like these people that would lug around a half a million dollar camera and they would jump off their golf cart, set of tripod, watch a shot, and then the A-list golfer will, you know, make their shot, and then they pack the whole rig up, and then they just start running down the cart, the uh golf path, getting ready for the next one. And like at the end of their shift, they are spent.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah. That's what she did.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

And then she was wearing you know the proper Victorian era clothing. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yep. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Yeah, that is incredible. I want to read more about her.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Oh, yeah, she's cool. Uh, you can see her. Her photos that she took for the World's Fair and the Olympics, too. I'll find the link and I'll send it over.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

So among those 5,000 photographs were some pictures taken of the exhibition's anthropology days. These events were some of the most notorious events at the fair, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of many then and now. These events, events in quotations, I don't even know what to call them, were organized by the director of anthropology, William J. McGee and James Sullivan, and were held on August 12th through August 13th, 1904. These would be days of embarrassment for both the fair and the Olympics held there. Sullivan and McGee put together contests, I guess, between people native to various indigenous communities around the world, including Native Americans, people from the Philippines, Africa, and India. There were 100 participants, including the Fort Shaw Indian Girls School basketball team, who would become a sensation for their skill in the sport and would also take over some uh attention from Olympic events because they were so good. So, Fort Shaw Indian Girls School basketball team, look them up, they're awesome. Anthropology days were marketed to the public as a scientific experiment to compare the athletic ability of indigenous peoples and that of white athletes.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Oh my gosh, in other words. Portraying white people as superior and then Yeah, that was their goal. Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Today we can see right through that excuse. But even people who were there witnessing it happening, including contemporary scientists, stated that there was a lack of any form of science or scientific practices. And this was just a reflection of the organizers' bias. That was a direct quote reflection of the organizers' bias. So people of the day were like, no, this is stupid. So you can't use the excuse, oh, it's just the time period. Because even people who were there were like, this is disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Well, it's like when my grandfather was a kid, so we're talking 1920s America. And obviously the idea of racial divide and and all that kind of stuff, it was still very much a thing. Like the black folks lived over there, the white folks lived over here, and they didn't mix or anything like that. But my grandfather observed blatant racism, and even as a little kid, he understood and he saw blatant racism. So it's it's like even in any time period, you're never going to find a society where 100% of the people are totally racist bigots. They they can see right through it. Like, I feel like if you and I went back in time, we'd be like, oh my god, this is so embarrassing for a free nation to behave like this. And we would probably find other like-minded people pretty easily.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Yeah. Kubertin even heard about these days and made his opinion very well known. He said, as for that outrageous 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.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

That is very uh that is very prophetic, especially for the black men, because uh yeah, yeah, you look at track and field, you look at basketball, you look at a lot of sports, and it's uh it's got a pretty large African-American contingent that vastly superior to any sort of athletic ability that I could have.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Yeah, same.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

Like, I can't even run across the a uh a basketball court without having to stop three times in the midway through to catch my breath.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Yeah, say what you want about Coubertin. He was very um he felt that anybody who could participate in a short in a sport should participate.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

He was very open to that.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

Um, and and Paris was also at that time uh was a lot more progressive. Like Paris, France, in the early 1900s, all the 1920s and 30s was very progressive. Like you didn't, you didn't have to wait until marriage to have kids, and they were a lot more understanding of homosexuality, and you know, black men was like, okay, cool. Like, what's the big deal about it? Like, why why do why do we have to treat them any different? So, like when Cooper Tunnel probably saw how Americans were behaving, they're probably thinking that you know such a guys had a war that settled this. Like, why is this still a thing? And he's probably appalled by it. And it still is a thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Jeez.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

It can be agreed, I think, in my opinion, that the anthropology days leave a dark stain on the 1904 fair and the Olympics held that year. Excluding the anthropology days, the Olympic Games in 1904 held a total of 92 different events. These included track and field, archery, gymnastics, swimming, fencing, and tug-of-war. Some of these events would debut for the first time as official Olympic events, including the decathlon, boxing, freestyle wrestling, and dumbbell lifting.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Before 1904, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Right?

unknown 45:40

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Before 1904, winners of the events of the Olympics would receive an olive branch and a silver medal for first place. For second place, athletes would receive a laurel and a bronze medal. But for the 1904 games, the IOC decided to change this up a little bit. First place would receive a gold medal, second silver, and third bronze, starting the tradition that is still in place today.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Oh, I wonder how much one of those medals would go for today.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Probably a lot. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

I bet I mean I bet those gold medals back then were probably the size of like a big coin. Not like not like today. I think they were like what four and a half inches or something. Like there's a set size that they are. And they're of course like 5% gold. Back then they were probably like two inches in diameter and probably a quarter inch thick, and probably made from like solid gold.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Like I'm not sure what size they are, but you can see pictures of them. You can look them up.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Yeah. Yeah. I do know like the medals have gotten bigger over the generations. So I'd be curious to see how much one of those go for. In fact, I'm going to look that up while you go on.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

All right. There were a total of 651 athletes that competed in the 1904 Olympics, representing 12 different countries. Notably, both France and Britain declined to send any athletes. This was primarily due to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, which preoccupied European and Asian nations overseas. Complicating matters for international athletes was also the expectation of people having to pay their own way for lodging and travel. This arrangement likely deterred a lot of international athletes or just made logistics really difficult. And due to these constraints, only 71 of the athletes represented a different country. The rest were American. So we have a very lopsided Olympics with like 500 something Americans and 71 international athletes.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

So uh just just so you know, a 1904 Olympic gold medal was sold for$545,000 at auction.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

The uh the medal which was awarded to Fred Schule for the 110 meter hurdles was part of a larger collection of Olympic memorabilia sold by the RR auction. Um so yeah, if you want one of these things, it's uh yeah, it's it's um a solid half a million dollars. Sweet. Wow, they're actually pretty impressive. Like the work that good, man, these things are impressive.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Yeah, they're really nice. Overall, the Olympic events were scheduled over six months in compliance with the fair schedule. Apparently, somebody did not pay attention to the 1900 Olympics in Paris. Six month schedule.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

That is such a long time, dude.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

So dumb. Chapter 14.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

Some people have probably wished it was six months today.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

Maybe I wouldn't want to.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

Well, I know a few. I have a uh friend of the family. He him and his wife, they're uh to them, like the Olympics is a religious thing. Like they follow all these abstract sports for four years just to see it culminate on every Olympics. It's pretty, pretty interesting to and they keep track of all the athletes and all that stuff. It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Maybe to watch it, but like when you're in it, six months is a long time.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

There was a guy, um, I forgot his name, a Japanese athlete who was sent to play tennis, and he competed in June of 1904, and he lost, but he's still qualified. But but the the competition wouldn't be held for another three to four weeks. So he ended up not competing, and he went to UPenn, I think it was UPenn, uh, and played baseball for them, and he's the first Japanese baseball player in college baseball.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Because he literally timed out of his Olympic sport.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Because the Olympic Games were stretched over a six-month period. And he was like, no, I'm gonna go play baseball.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

In a way, I guess I could kind of see it just because of the amount of work that has to go into it. It's not like they can just you can only use the stadium if you had one. You can only use that field for one thing at a time. It's not like you could have 25 different sports going on at once.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Well, it wasn't even that. The problem was it was overshadowed by the fair.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Oh, got it.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

The fair's events were taking over everything, and people were more drawn to the World's Fair than they were the Olympics, and since they were being held in tandem, the Olympic schedule was at the mercy of the fair schedule.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

So got it. How long does a fair last?

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Six months.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

Whoa. Okay, I thought it was just like a weekend thing.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Oh no, no, the World's Fair was a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Yeah. Chapter 4. Very short one. Gymnastics. The first events, gymnastics and lacrosse, were held from July 1st to July 7th. In 1904, the gymnastics events included both apparatus events, which is like um bars and horse stuff like that, as well as track and field events. Uh the first few days of July in 1904, 33-year-old German immigrant George Iser and his team would be competing in an all-around event, triathlon, and team competitions. Each team member would also be competing in individual events for gymnastics. In the all-around team event, Iser and his team placed fourth. However, in the individual events, Iser did fairly poorly. He finished in tenth place in the apparatus section and last place in track and field. 118th place out of 118 people. To be fair, to be fair, Izer was competing on a wooden prosthetic leg.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

His left leg was missing after a train accident took most of it when he was a child. So Izer would have another.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

How did he qualify?

SPEAKER_01 51:53

Well, hold on, hold on.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

I guess you were just kind of selected for it. Like, hey, you want to go? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Izer would have another shot at meddling on October 29th when the Olympic Gymnastics Championships were held. In one single day, he competed in six different events parallel bars, the 25-foot rope climb, the long horse vault, Palmel horse, horizontal bars, and the all-around. Iser meddled in every single event he competed in. In total, he walked away. In total, yeah. He walked away with gold and parallel bars, vault and rope climbing. So three gold, silver and pommel horse, and the all-around, two silver, and bronze in the horizontal bar. Iser would be the first person to compete in the Olympics with a prosthetic.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

That is wild.

SPEAKER_01 52:43

Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_00 52:44

That is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, he has a really cool story. He's a Ger German immigrant. His family moved to uh the US when he was 14. And he would be a bookkeeper, I believe, for a construction company in Missouri. Uh and we don't know when, or historians don't know when he lost his leg in that train accident, but it was when he was a kid. And he was lucky to be alive. Yeah, yeah. But he took to gymnastics and and he was practicing it with uh different clubs uh in Missouri. And there were German clubs that he joined, and eventually he qualified for the Olympics and won a billion medals in a single day. So good.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

Yeah, I could just envision him like, you know, like got that that pommel horse, you know, have they run down, hit the pommel horse, and then like I've seen videos of it from like the 20s where they just hit it and they just push off of it and then land. Yeah. Now they do like all these flips and everything like that. But back then I could just envision him like just doing that, like maybe trying to incorporate a flip, and then you just see his leg just go flying out into the audience or something like that. I'm pretty sure that is.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

That'd be pretty epic.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

That would that would be the coolest way to lose your leg in a in a competition. That'd be pretty epic.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Alright. Here's the moment everybody's waiting for.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Chapter five, the marathon. Oh, the marathon. In 1904. The Olympic marathon race would be held twice before this one. Once in Athens in '96, eighteen ninety-six, and once in Paris in 1900. Both races seem to have gone smoothly, even in Paris, especially when we compare it to this race. This was likely because the conditions of the race were held in were sorry, the conditions the race was held in in Paris was a lot less difficult.

SPEAKER_00 54:49

And this was it sucked at that time versus the other two times.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Well, this time was worse. This time was terrible. All right. We get most of the details from the marathon from a sports organizer and writer who goes by the name of Charles J.P. Lucas. Um I read it. You can find it on the interwebs if you do choose to read it. Just FYI. Um, he is a little racist. At least the things he says are pretty racist. So just FYI if you do choose to read this before one.

SPEAKER_00 55:24

So is it one of these guys in one of these times where they say really, really racist things, but that's just part of their vernacular?

SPEAKER_01 55:36

I feel like that's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 55:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

And I don't want to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

I guess like my great grandfather would always refer to black people as the n-word, but he didn't have anything against them. He didn't have any. He's like, I I I think they're fine. But he just always grew up as a little kid all through, you know, the early 1900s, referring to black people as the n-word, and that was just how people referred to them. Nowadays, it's like, yeah, no, let's not do that. Let's not do that. If we can steer around that, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Let's word choice is important here. It's kind of like that. Yeah. But you know, just be forewarned. You can find it, you can read it. It is fascinating. I did enjoy reading it besides some language that's used, but anyway.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

The vocab.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Yeah, the vocab. We also have some minor details from Sullivan in his record of the games. However, I think he was probably trying to clean up his reputation after the whole thing, so it's a little bit sugar-coated.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Really?

SPEAKER_01 56:44

Yeah. Alright. The race was held on August 30th, 1904. It was 90 degrees with extreme humidity, considering the location that the games are being held in. 90 degrees, probably like 90% humidity.

SPEAKER_00 57:01

Oh. I've been there during the summer, like in August, and it is that air is thick. Yeah. Like with two K's.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

Yeah, this is August 30th, and that's around the same time. Oh the track would be mostly dirt. And according to Lucas, inches deep in it, along with seven or more hills that were anywhere from 100 to 300 feet high with different lengths of ascents and descents. In total, the course was just over 24 miles in length.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

Yeah, marathon, but I wonder what what were they wearing?

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Sullivan had arranged cars to follow runners over the course of the race. This would prove to be a very bad decision. Cars kicked up an incredible amount of dust on the track, reducing visibility and cause causing athletes to breathe in the dust as they ran. Sullivan also decided to run an experiment of his own when organizing this event. He wanted to test the effects of dehydration on the athletes who were competing.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

Great, great time to conduct an experiment.

SPEAKER_01 58:15

Therefore, he purposely created two official water stations along the 24.87 mile-long track, one at the six-mile mark. And one at the 12-mile mark. From a water well. So one was like from a water tank, and the other one was just from some well somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

Six miles and twelve miles. And you can't you can't have water before you hit those those two areas.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

Like nobody could hand you a cup like they can today.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

Just nope. They were not allowed to give their runners water. Think about that. Think about the marathons that are ran today and how much water and water just the water cups alone, you can see them all throughout the track.

SPEAKER_02 58:56

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Not this one. Not this one. That's crazy. That's crazy. It's nuts.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Well, I mean, when I worked at a retail chain years ago doing deliverant assembly, we would dig these basketball systems in people's backyards, and here it is, like middle of July. It's 110 degrees outside, two o'clock in the afternoon, and you're trying to dig this four foot by four foot hole. And then some corporate executive comes in and says, I don't want any water. To like he didn't want any water in the cab of the truck, in the trailer of the truck. No water was allowed whatsoever. And we're like, bro, you you do know what state this is, right? Like I feel like this Sullivan is the uh distant relative or ancestor of that corporate guy that I dealt with.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

Maybe. I don't know. Sullivan's gross.

SPEAKER_00 59:53

Wild.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

Wild. Thirty two runners participated in the race from four different countries. Most of the athletes were. American. There were also three men representing South, no, yes, three men representing South Africa, ten Greek athletes, and one guy from Cuba. There were five American athletes that people had their eyes on, along with other American athletes, but these these five had high expectations. Arthur Newton of New York had run the Paris Marathon four years earlier. Sam Muller, also from New York, won the Boston Marathon in 1902. John Lorden from Massachusetts won the Boston Marathon in 2003. And Michael Spring, also from New York, had won the Boston Marathon just a few months earlier in 1904. And then we also have Thomas Hicks from Massachusetts, and he had been competing for the Boston Marathon the past four years, and he finished second in one of those races. So we have these five guys all from Boston or New York. And American had their eye on them. The Greeks had sent a statement to Sullivan before they competed saying that uh they were sending their runners not to win, but for the spirit of sport and competition, and also um to make friends and allyships with different nations and and all of that good stuff, which cool. You know, I'm all about it. But they weren't there to win, they were just there for uh sportsmanship, which you know, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

Yeah, they were the token Greeks.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

Yeah. All right, then we have Len Tanyane and Jan or John Mashiani, and they were representing South Africa. They were originally not intended to be a part of the race, but signed up later, possibly being convinced by their white South African teammate, B. W. Harris. These two guys were two Tsuana tribesmen, and they were in St. Louis as part of the World's Fair assigned to reenact the Boer War. Um participating in the Anthropology Day events mentioned before. They were messenger, they were actually messengers during the war period, and uh they did have excellent athletic ability. Both Lynn and Jen showed up to the track barefoot that day, ready to run. So these these two guys were actually the first black Africans to uh compete in an Olympic sporting event. I thought that was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

Yeah, and those two guys laid the foundation for like even to this day, like Kenya. I mean, the Kenyans, like they they always win these really long races. It's just like it's just what they do.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

Yeah, and then we have my favorite, Felix Carvajal from Cuba. When Carvajal arrived at the track, he was wearing a slanted beret on his head, a white long sleeve button-up shirt, street shoes, and dark trousers ready for the office. Story goes. This guy. The story goes that an American runner concerned about the heat found some scissors and gave them to Carvajal, who cut his trousers at the knee. And you can actually see a picture of him standing before the race starts in his cut trousers and super long socks and street shoes. It's great. Carvajal was a mailman from Cuba who earned his money to get to St. Louis by holding various running expeditions or exhibitions, sorry, in his home country. In one, he had raised money by running the lengths of Cuba, which I thought was interesting. And another, he had run laps around the Capitol building in Havana to earn money and sponsorship from his government. Apparently it worked. On his journey to the US, story goes that he ran into some money troubles before making it to Missouri. He landed in New Orleans and had to walk or hitchhike the rest of the way. Uh, and there are two versions of what happened. One is that he was given enough money and only enough money for his trip overseas, and then once he got to the US, he had to figure it out. The other story is that he uh gambled away the rest of his funds in dice games when he landed in New Orleans. Whatever the case, Carball arrived in St. Louis hungry and maybe a little underprepared, but he was pretty confident.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

Wow. That is such a far cry to how these athletes are today when they get ready for these marathons. Like they have all these like sports scientists and doctors, and they're being checked over, and everything is being monitored, and this guy is showing up for the office.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:43

He's ready to deliver the mail. At 3:03 p.m., 90 degrees in St. Louis, Missouri, in August.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

Perfect time.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:55

The shot was fired and the race was on. About half a mile in, James Lordon, one of the guys who was expected to win, began throwing up all over the place and had to drop out. Got picked up by one of the cars. Carbajall was spotted chatting with some spectators before happily continuing on his merry way. Charles Lucas was sitting in his car, the writer that we were just talking about, eating some peaches. And some apples, I think. Apples and peaches. Carbel came out to him and asked him for some. After he was denied his snack, Carvalhall, and this is direct a direct quote from Lucas's book, playfully snatched two and ran along the road eating as he went. Good for him.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

Is this even resembling a marathon? I feel like it's like some cartoon.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:47

I know, it's great. At around the nine-mile mark, Fred Loris from New York began to complain of bad cramps from exhaustion and heat. He opted to drop out of the race and hitched a ride from one of the cars, following the athletes back to the finish line. At the same time, Mahler and Newton were in the lead with Hicks about two miles behind them. About a mile later, around 10 miles, the story goes, and there is there's no, as I found out, there's no primary resource to uh corroborate this, but it's a good story. Um story goes that Carvajal stumbled on an apple orchard and picked some apples to eat while he was running. The apple he ate turned out to be rotten and not feeling well, he stopped and took a short nap to feel better. Again, there's no primary resource to say that that's true, but it is funny, so I included it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:44

Like, were these people even pointed in the right direction? I feel like when the gun fired, these 20 some odd dudes just ran in twin different directions.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:52

Right. Well, I think they're I think there were directions of some sort. Like they they had a direction to go in, but you know. At this point, several runners began feeling the effects of the race's conditions. Bostonian Henry Bailey slowed down to a walk, and Sam Mueller dropped out of the race due to severe exhaustion and stomach cramps. At around 15 miles, William Garcia from San Francisco collapsed on the track. He was coughing up blood, and he was found unconscious not long after that. He was immediately taken to the hospital where he was seen by doctors. His collapse was caused by internal injuries from breathing in the dirt, dehydration, and overexertion. Garcia survived, but was told he was very lucky that he was brought to the hospital as quickly as he was, or he could have died.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:40

Well, and too, one thing I forgot to mention earlier, those cars. Uh, you know, like that episode that I did on uh leaded gasoline. Uh oh what? Um oh yeah, episodes 23 and 24. Um, so back then, cars, they when they burned gas, it was just plumes of black smoke. So these guys would have been running in basically like downtown Britain uh smog this entire time. I don't think it was probably that bad, but breathing in those car fumes back then would have been absolutely nauseating.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

It's not even counting all the dust.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:28

Yeah. Yeah, there's all the dust and then the heat and then the fact that they couldn't get water because of you know the Sullivan guy is like bent on committing war crimes in a non-war. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

Um so yeah, like he threw in the money at guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:47

So yeah, if if we uh if we throw in that car exhaust, oh man, I could only imagine how bad that would have been. Like sipping on my soda right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:59

Oh look, Carvajal is renting again. Oh there he goes, at a steady pace and very quick, too. Thomas Hicks was now in the lead, but he was in pretty bad shape. With almost 10 miles to go, Hicks asked his trainers for water. His trainers had Solomon's experiment to think about. So instead of giving him a cup of water, they gave him a wet sponge to wipe to wipe his mouth with. Then, with about seven miles to go, so three miles later-ish, Hicks was given a combo drink containing strychnine, brandy, and egg whites to keep him going.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:38

Strychnine, uh-huh, brandy, uh-huh, and egg whites. And eggs.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

That's how you win race.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:49

Uh yeah, to the graveyard.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:57

Like we'll get back to the strychnine.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:59

I don't know what the strychnine is supposed to do other than kill rats. And then you've got the brandy, which alcohol severely dehydrates you. Yes. The eggs are they supposed to help? Protein? Uh sure. Yeah, if they even knew what proteins were at that time.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:22

About five miles later.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:27

Holy crap.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:28

As uh Hicks is being fed this weird concoction of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:35

Death in a bottle or death in a cup.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:37

Yeah. Fred Lores, remember Fred Lores? He gave up because of cramps. He reappeared running as if he hadn't dropped out earlier, taking a drive down the track about 11 miles. Lores ran all the way to the finish line. At first, people thought he won, including um our photographer friend who was taking pictures. And uh, we don't know who it was, but somebody in the crowd shouted out uh, hey, that guy took car for most of the race. He cheated. Lores was disqualified and later banned from Future Games for Life. Yeah. He he he would eventually get this punishment remote, claiming that it was all a joke for the funnies. He claimed actually that he was running towards the stadium to fix the car as it had broken down when he had jumped out.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

This is fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

That was great.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:33

This is this is a very exciting marathon. I love this.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:37

It's so so great. Yay sports. So while Lores was being disqualified for giggles, Hicks was looking much worse. By the 22-mile mark, Hicks's skin appeared pale gray, according to spectators. He was given another shot of strychnine brandy and egg whites, followed by a warm sponge bath with two miles to go and nobody in front of him. So he was winning.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

How did anybody survive this? I feel like this is um nobody died.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:10

So by the time he reached the 24-mile mark near the finish line, Hicks was hallucinating. He was thinking he had miles and miles to go. He was begging to just get some water to lay down, like he thought he was gonna die. And he was barely able to walk. His trainers were supporting him physically, sometimes carrying him and continuing to pump him with these stimulants that they're giving him. Oh my gosh. Finally, Hicks crossed the finish line and then nearly collapsed into the arms of the people cheering. And despite all of the celebrating going on around him, he was rushed to a medical facility, treated by multiple doctors. He did survive, but he was in really bad condition. He lost eight pounds in that race.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:57

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:58

From start to finish, he lost eight pounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:01

That was probably all water weight, too. So that's he lost about a gallon of water.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:05

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:07

Despite the assistance in finishing, because remember they did have to carry him. Hicks was declared the winner. At least give him the win, right? At least we got him the win. Uh he had the time of three hours, 28 minutes, and 53 seconds. Second place was awarded to Albert Corey, an American. Uh, he came in uh six minutes after Hicks did. Arthur Newton finished third at three hours and 47 minutes. And then coming in at fourth place was Carvajal, despite his side adventures during the marathon. Yeah, Carvajal.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:49

Still dressed to deliver the mail.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:52

He's he's ready to go, man. He was great. And and from what I gathered, he crossed the finish line and he was fine. Like he could have run more. Len Tanyane, one of the South African guys, finished ninth place. Contemporary sources claim that he would have done a lot better than ninth place, but he was ambushed by a dog, taking up about a mile out of route.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:18

Wait, okay, so the mailman made it through just fine. But then this is having conversations gets chased by a dog.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:25

Yeah, that's correct.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:28

Maybe maybe the dog thought that he was the mailman.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:31

Maybe, I don't know. Jan Mashiani, the other South American dude, or South African dude, sorry, finished 12th place. Overall, 18 out of the 32 runners finished the marathon. I repeat, only 18 people finished the marathon. All the other athletes dropped out due to the bad conditions and medical concerns. The media quickly deemed the marathon a complete and total failure and utter fiasco. It was a whole thing, as you can see, or here, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:03

Yeah, like how did this compare to the other two times?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:06

Like this was a just a complete disaster.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:09

This was Okay, so even at that time, they could tell, like, this is not how it's supposed to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:15

The media took it and ran with it, too. They were like, disaster marathon. It was terrible. This made about in the way it turned out. Sullivan stated, when the games were held at Rome in 1908, I do not think that the marathon run would be included in the program. I personally am opposed to it, and it is indefensible on any ground but historic. Okay, Sullivan. Despite Sullivan's failure, a marathon was indeed held in 1908. All right. Chapter 6, finish line. We're at the end here. The Olympics will continue until November 23rd, 1904. Ray Urie would win three gold medals in three standing long jump events. Thomas Keeley, an Irishman who, like Carbajall, paid his way to the US, would win gold in the decathlon for Ireland, making it a point not to represent Britain as expected. He's an interesting dude. You should check him out. Swimming was held in an artificial lake on the fairgrounds. Zultan Halmay, Charles Daniels, and Emile Roche Rouche all won gold at the fake fair lake. Overall, the Olympic events would continue to be overshadowed by the fair, not getting the kind of attention it gets today. On top of that, due to the lack of international turnout, the gold medal winners were lopsidedly American. James Sullivan continued to be awful throughout his career, even after the Olympic Games. Part of the U.S. Olympic Committee, he voted to bar American women from participating in the 1912 Olympics, even though other international Olympic women were allowed to compete. So 1912 was the first Games that allowed women to compete. And the US Olympic Committee, including Sullivan, voted to take that away from the women in the US. He also voted good. Yeah, this guy. He also voted to strip away gold medals won fair and square by Native American athlete Jim Thorpe. Famous dude. Sullivan was injured in a train wreck in 1911. And in 1914, underwent a related surgery and then died in recovery. So that's Sullivan's fate.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:43

Sounds like this guy was a train wreck.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:45

He you know, he sure was. Pierre Descubertins served as the IOC president until 1925, making sure his games continued even throughout World War One. He died in 1937. He wished for his heart to be buried separate from his body in Olympia, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics, and they really did do that. Organizers and athletes still visit the site to this day.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:11

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:25

Today the marathon is common sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:30

Pretty much. Today the marathon is one of the most anticipated and prestigious running races in the Olympic Games. And that is it. Do I ask you? I forgot my essential question, so I'm gonna ask it now. Um, have you ever tried to organize a party or an event, and you thought it was just gonna be the greatest thing since sliced bread? And it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:55

Yes. Um I I I there's no way I could ever be like a party planner. I cannot. I yeah, I I am I am absolutely incapable as a human being of organizing many smaller events in the umbrella of one big event. I yeah, I have no idea how to manage people or the time. Maybe one event where there's like maybe two people competing, I can handle that, but nothing, nothing at this scale. And uh I have and I've and you know, now that I'm in my 40s, I've kind of learned that I'm not good at this, therefore I'm never gonna try to plan anything that I would just assume would work out because it's not. Even when I taught academics at Cathlon, and we would hold uh scrimmages with a bunch of other schools. Coming over to take these tests, I have no idea what I'm doing. And it would always invariably get screwed up. And then there's always somebody in the group that's like, oh, I can take care of it. And then they do. It's just like those people move humanity forward. The people that can take something like this and figure it out and actually make it work are incredible human beings that need Nobel Prizes.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:27

So like the Brooks and the Coubertants of the world.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:31

Yeah. Yeah, because there's just so many moving pieces. I just can't. I I just couldn't keep track of it. Especially if I found out. If I was Coupertant and um and I discovered that there was a marathon taking place where Americans were giving athletes brandy to get them through the race, I I would have lost it. But that doesn't matter because Coupertin wasn't even at this one, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:00

Yeah, he doesn't count this one, I don't think. Like this this was the embarrassing one.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:08

Yeah, that's uh that's interesting because look when when the last time I was in St. Louis, we flew there for a wedding, and I'm in this field. It was like a like a soccer field kind of a thing. And I trip over something that's in the ground, and uh I'm like, what the heck is this? And I I get back up and I look down, and it's like an islet, it's like a brass or a bronze islet, and like just sticking out of the ground, maybe about an inch or so. And it turns out that that is when I eventually went to the uh museum close by, it turns out that those islets were the things that anchored down tents for the Olympics. That's where people would that's basically the original um what is it, the Olympic town or whatever it's called, where everybody hung out. I can't remember what it's called, uh, where all the athletes go.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:08

I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:09

Yeah, I can't remember either, but that was one of the uh that was one of the anchors, and then I I tried to like pull it out, and I'm like, cool. Because this was right around the time the Beijing Olympics were going down. So um I I tried to like pull that thing out, and then a uh security guard stopped me real quick from doing that.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:29

I mean, as they should, and that's kind of a piece of history that's probably on protected ground.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:37

Well, no, nobody knew nobody even knew that it was there. Like nobody, the people there, there was like a farmer's market going on. Like people had no idea that this is where the 1904 Olympics was held.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:49

Except for the people running the museum. Well, the security card.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:55

The museum was like two miles away. Still. So yeah, that's a that that's that's a new one. Um I kind of wanted to ask that Sullivan dude, like, what is the logic behind giving a runner brandy and strychnine?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:18

Uh that was that was Hicks's trainers. It wasn't really Sullivan's.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:22

Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:24

Yeah. Um, supposedly it was one of those things where they felt that it was healthy, kind of. Um because you know, it was like the the the time of snake oil and yeah. These things can fix everything and that type of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:43

Yeah, like alcohol is the uh like the uh the the it it it is well, yeah, like they had those, like you said, the snake oils where you know, drink this tonic and it will cure your headache, it will open up your sinuses, it will cure your tinnitus, it will fix your constipation.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:02

That's that's exactly and we're like uh you know, methamphetamines can can really perk you up.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:12

Or, you know, the cocaine and the sodas in the Coca-Cola.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:18

I I just kind of Google strychnine here though. Uh apparently it was used historically as a stimulant. Uh it was a cardiac and respiratory stimulant, digestive stimulant, an analeptic, and an antidote for barbiturates and opiate overdose.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:38

Yeah. So they they truly felt that it was a stimulant.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:42

Yeah. Meanwhile, symptoms of poisoning is uh agitation, restlessness, heightened awareness and fear, difficulty breathing, muscle pain and soreness, dark urine and severe cases, respiratory failure, and brain death within 15 to 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:01

Poor Hicks.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:02

Yeah, he he must have felt sick as a dog during all that.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:08

I think he came back though and won some races.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:12

I'm actually looking it up right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:15

I'm surprised they haven't made a movie about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:18

They really need to, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:20

Just and almost have it be like a like a comedy.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:23

So that's it. That's the 1904 Olympic Games in all of its glory.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:30

It was quite fun. What do you got in store for the next one?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:33

Well, not quite sure yet. Uh I'm thinking of leaning towards either doing like a famous movie star from the 30s and 40s, okay. Uh, Judy Garland. Her life was a dumpster fire, in that, like, hey, let's take this 16-year-old girl and let's take her into this back room with this producer who's like this 50-60-year-old man, and let's see if she can perform well enough to be on a movie set.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:16

And then, you know, as developing teenage girls goes, there's days that when she would be tired and stuff like that. So then they're like, cool, let's just give her some drugs and just pepper up. And uh, yeah, her entire life was spent it it it's gonna be if I if I decide to do it, it's going to be a little more for the mature audiences because of some of the things that uh it's kind of I'm kind of like exposing what was going on in Hollywood and how women were treated back then. And uh if you want to know objectivity, uh that is exactly how women were viewed. They were nothing more than objects, and the younger the better. So they're like the original childhood stars that just their lives were just destroyed as a result. Um or in a similar note, the Bay of Pigs.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:15

Similar. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:21

Yes, very similar, just right down the same same path. But no, the uh the Bay of Pigs was that um was the uh CAA's attempt to have Fidel Castro overthrown by use of taking Cubans and training them and then unleashing them on Castro, who was all intents and purposes a vastly superior leader and a way better tactician and had way more manpower, gunpowder, powder, power, firepower. Uh yeah, these uh these little Cubans that were supposedly going to have the backing of America ran right into a slaughter. And it was one of these dumpster fires that was planned from the very beginning to be a dumpster fire, unless you were the guy that thought you could outsmart JFK. And uh, so this is like a dumpster fire that leads to another dumpster fire. So I'm kind of doing a toss-up between the two. Cool. Maybe maybe have a part one and part two where I connect the two ideas of 1930s childhood stars and and and bay of pigs.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:41

I don't know how you would do that unless you talk about Marilyn Monroe.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:45

Yeah, that would be that's that's another one. But yeah, that that's kind of kind of what I've been uh I've been thinking on. So so yeah, uh hope you like the show, the slightly different format. Uh, if you want to see more from us or read more from us and see the show notes and everything, be sure to hit us up on thedaysdumpsterfier.com. Uh check it out. We've got you know a fairly extensive library now. We will link to uh all the other shows that we talked about in this episode on there so that you can quickly find them. Uh, you can also go to the website and subscribe to wherever you get our show. So we are on iTunes and Amazon, even YouTube. We are we're pretty much everywhere. Uh so yeah, you can go to the website to to get all that. Also, be sure to go on there and check out uh Kara's artwork. She tends to put stuff on there that is very theme-oriented. I'm I'm still really curious to see what you come up with, Kara, for Donner Party, Waterworld. This one actually, I think the 1904 Olympics, I think I just have visions of these athletes just running in every different direction. One guy's like drunk off his butt, another dude's like driving a car, uh, another guy's like sleeping in an apple orchard, and another dude's delivering the mail. Like, like it's just envisioned completely that would be a really big draw. Yeah, it would be, yeah, that would be uh that would make an epic tattoo.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:28

Oh god.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:29

Could you imagine the story behind that one?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:32

It'd be like a full back piece. I don't even know how you don't know either.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:36

So yeah, we're also on Instagram um at the Days Dumpster Fire. And uh yeah, be sure to uh tell people, go out there, get them to uh subscribe to our show. If you have that friend or relative that has no idea what a podcast is, this is the perfect time to take their phone and show them uh how to get to our show. And really the the heart of the show is to be like, okay, look at these dumpster fires, look at where humanity thought something would be a good idea, and then it just absolutely blows up in their faces. Use that as a way to help you navigate your own personal dumpster fires because hey man, it's a lot easier to learn from Winston Churchill in Gallipoli. It's a lot easier to look at that failure rather than coming across that situation on your own. And uh yeah, it's it's always better to try to prevent history from repeating itself, and the best way to do that is to pay attention to our dumpster fires.

unknown 1:31:52

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:53

Well, with that, see ya. We hope you all have a good night, and we'll see you in the next one.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:58

All right, keep it a hot mess.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:00

Bye.