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Snapshot 19xx – The Youngest Olympic Gold Medalist EVER!
December 9, 2024 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
Without searching the internet (or scrolling to see the images below), who do you think is the youngest Olympic athlete to ever win a gold medal in an individual event (i.e., not a team sport or relay)? If you are unsure, would you guess the youngest to be a male or female? How about their country… or the event (sport) tin which they competed?
I purposely left out the year in the heading – otherwise some might have guessed Nadia Comaneci (she is actually ranked as the 7th youngest) or Klaus Zerta (who comes in at #2 and remains the youngest male). We found a newspaper with a report in a New York Times dated August 13, 1936 telling of 13-year-old Marjorie Gestring (13 years, 267 days) who still holds the top spot.
Note: There is a younger female (also 13, but 180 days younger), but she (Kim Yun-Mi) won her gold medal as a member of a relay team.
Details: Marjorie was a springboard diver from the United States who earned her Olympic gold in the 3-meter woman’s event in Berlin – the infamous games in where Jesse Owens (along with others) put a crimp in Hitler’s efforts to demonstrate the superiority of German genetics. To add to the check-back, the games were the first to be televised.
The following is a photo of the coverage of Marjorie’s accomplishment:
Snapshot 1926… They said she would never make it…
February 24, 2020 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
We recently came across an August 6th Leominster Daily Enterprise which had an article stating that a young woman was attempting to swim across The English Channel, and while acknowledging her spirit, made it clear she was soon to fail as many woman had done so prior to her effort. Of course this inspired us to check the issue for the following day to see whether this young girl, or her doubters would come up short. The headline tells it all. 
The Traveler… how long did it go?…
April 16, 2018 by The Traveler · Leave a Comment
Today’s journeys toke me to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, by the way of Fitchburg Sentinel dated April 16, 1968 where I found a record-breaking sporting event. The Houston Astros and the New York Mets were playing at the Astrodome where “…things started getting pretty funny around the 17th inning. Roy Hofheinz officially sanctioned the humor of the situation five innings later… ‘After about the 17th inning everything sort of got funny’ said Staub, who batted nine times in the six-hour, six-minute contest. The game outlasted by two innings the longest night game played previously… The 24-inning game mercifully came to an end… with an error letting in the run after eight pitchers had battled valiantly to preserve the scoreless deadlock…”
This would become the longest scoreless Major League baseball game in history and still holds that record today.
~The Traveler
The Traveler… “The Big Dipper” sets NBA record… Communism – the beginning of the end?…
February 15, 2016 by The Traveler · Leave a Comment
Today I traveled to New York City by the means of The New York Times, February 15, 1966. There I found that Wilt Chamberlain, playing for the 76’ers, had scored his 20,884th point to surpassed the record previously set by Bob Pettit.
The front page also has the reporting of “2-SOVIET AUTHORS ARE CONVICTED” with subheads “Court Finds Works Published Abroad Harmed Regime” and “Sinyavsky Is Given 7 Years, Daniel 5 at Hard Labor”. Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel were convicted of writing under pseudonym names and sending the books out of Russia for publication. “…The judgment, considered unprecedented in modern Soviet history, called it a criminal act to put into print beliefs and ideas that could be used profitably by ‘enemies of communism’…”
As historian Fred Coleman writes, “Historians now have no difficulty pinpointing the birth of the modern Soviet dissident movement. It began in February 1966 with the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, two Russian writers who ridiculed the Communist regime in satires smuggled abroad and published under pen names… Little did they realize at the time that they were starting a movement that would help end Communist rule.” [source: Wikipedia]
~The Traveler