Considered the best all-around athlete of modern times, Native American James "Jim" Thorpe won gold medals in both the pentathlon and the decathlon in the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympics. Scandal struck in late January 1913 when he was stripped of his titles by the Amateur Athletic Union after admitting he had played professional baseball prior to the Games. Within days of the judgement, however, Thorpe had signed on with the New York Giants and went on to play years of professional baseball, football, and basketball. Read more about it!

The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.

The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.