Best. Sport. Ever.

One of the many perks of working in a humongous office building is the little tv displaying news tidbits in the elevators. There are numerous stories up there every day ranging from pointless to interesting to amazing. I saw one earlier that transcends all of those generic adjectives.

Did you know that Dueling Pistols was an Olympic sport in 1906? How did they do this you ask? It's simple really. Said duellers simply fired their pistols at mannequins wearing targets for clothes. Aside from the obvious brilliance of awarding medals for possessing an outstanding athletic ability to kill people, the really fascinating part to me is trying to figure out how these people trained. While logic dictates the distinguished gentlemen participating in this sadly defunct event spent a considerable amount of time serving up lead sandwiches to unusally large tree trunks, I'd like to imagine these Olympians going downtown with little more than a pistol, a leather glove and a warped sense of righteousness. Unfortunately, this was already a solid century after the famous Hamilton-Burr duel so I'll go ahead and assume these duelists were cowards and/or bored hunters hicks.

I also have to ask, how did they settle disputes in dueling pistol competitions? It must have been damn near impossible to get into a pistol dueling argument without it resulting in some form of duel. Alternatively, I suppose formal debates were the equalizer of choice.

P.S: In addition to Dueling Pistols, the 1906 Olympics also proudly awarded medals for Tug Of War. To learn more about the 1906 Olympics, you can go to the only webiste that matters.