The Olympic Games have been shut down by wars, persisted through terrorist attacks and hostage sieges, and endured drug scandals, boycotts and fake mugging dramas.
But as far as the Olympics go, the Tokyo Summer Games are already pretty historic. This is the first time the event has been delayed by a global pandemic.
This week would have been the beginning of the Olympics in Japan's capital.
But while you can't settle in for three weeks of non-stop sporting triumphs, you can read about one of the wildest Olympics in modern history: the 1904 St Louis Games.
It featured a tug-of-war event, only one competition for women, and a racially insensitive sideshow in which First Nation Americans, Mbuti tribesmen and Filipinos climbed a greased pole and slung mud at each other.
Then head of the International Olympics Committee Pierre de Coubertin described the 1904 Games as an "outrageous charade".
But it was the men's marathon that really highlighted the disorder of the event.
The race featured 32 runners, multiple incidents of cheating, drugs, rotten apples, a president's daughter and feral dogs.
On a sweltering summer day, with organisers deliberately depriving athletes of water, more than half the participants dropped out from dehydration. Several nearly died.
The winner, who had to be dragged across the finishing line by his trainers, was doped up and hallucinating on rat poison.
That was only after it was discovered that the first person to cross the line, Fred Lorz, actually hitched a ride in a car for most of the race.
Odd cast in history's strangest race
The 1904 men's marathon was so poorly organised, so rife with fraud, and so life-threatening to the competitors, that the organiser wanted the race abolished from future Games.
The race was held at 3:00pm on a sweltering 32-degree day, and took the runners over dusty, unpaved roads.
James Sullivan, the chief organiser of the St Louis Olympics, was interested in 'purposeful dehydration' — an ill-advised area of scientific research at the turn of the century — and ensured there was only one water station on the entire course.
Most of the athletes who took part in the Olympic marathon were not experienced long distance runners.
Two members of South Africa's Tswana tribe, who were in town for the World Fair, are believed to have raced in bare feet.
