September 24

It seems as if no aspect of sports is free from controversy. At the 1988 Summer Olympics, the 100-meter sprint event was held on September 24th. In this event, Ben Johnson beat both Carl Lewis and Linford Christie winning with a record time of 9.79 seconds. I know virtually nothing about this, or any other event, but that seems like an incredibly fast time in which to run 100 meters. Unfortunately for Johnson he was subsequently disqualified in what became a rather a high profile case of doping in sports. I looked into that a bit and was surprised to find out that doping was not the act of displaying really dopey behavior instead had a great deal to do with the use of performance enhancing drugs, in this instance some sort of steroid. Further research reveals that Johnson was disqualified not for use of steroids but for bad writing (Volpone is a good example of that) and for the fact that he had died on August 6, 1617.