Today in 1968, at the Mexico City Olympics, American high jumper Dick Fosbury changed his sport forever with a jumping style named for him: the Fosbury Flop.

Up to this point, the world’s top high jumpers used a move called the straddle to make it over the bar.

The jumper kicked up and then sort of rolled sideways in air to get their trunk and back leg all the way over.

As a high school track athlete, Fosbury tried the straddle, but it just didn’t work well for him.

So instead, he kicked off one foot, turned his back to the bar, and arched his back as he went over, kicking both feet high overhead.

Or, as one reporter described it, the move “looked like a guy falling off the back of a truck.”

There were concerns at first that imitators might end up breaking their necks!

Nonetheless, Fosbury used the Flop to win the 1968 NCAA high jump title and land a spot on the US Olympic team.

And at the Mexico City Games, he jumped 7 feet 4 ¼ inches, an Olympic record and good for the first American gold medal in the event in over a decade.

After that, the straddle was out, and the world of elite high jumpers moved to the Fosbury Flop.

Today in 2018, a bus driver in Paris stopped to pick up a passenger who used a wheelchair.

Like on many public transit systems, wheelchair users are priority passengers, so the driver asked the other riders to make room for him.

But nobody did.

So he stopped the bus, told everyone else to get off, and drove away with just one passenger on board.

Dick Fosbury flops to an Olympic high jump record (History.com)

Paris bus driver hailed a hero for kicking off ALL passengers after they refused to make room for wheelchair user (Evening Standard)

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Photo by Steven Pisano via Flickr/Creative Commons