16. Who won Olympic medals wearing mismatched shoes?
Sweeden, summer of 1912. Jim Thorpe had just finished meditating and ready to step into the Olympic stadium when he found out someone stole his shoes. This might despair most but not Jim who kept his cool and quickly found a mismatched pair as a replacement. Mind you, one of them he picked up from the trash. To even the shoes he wore an extra sock on the larger one.
He won two gold medals wearing these shoes and eight of the fifteen individual events comprising the pentathlon and decathlon.
Bonus fact 1: Jim Thorpe was the first native American to win an Olympic medal for the USA.
Bonus fact 2: Thorpe was a sports multi-talent. In addition to his career as an athlete, he played both professional baseball and football. His awards include First-team All-Pro (1923), NFL 1920s All-Decade Team, NFL 50th Anniversary All-Time Team, and 2× Consensus All-American (1911, 1912).