You Don't Say: Rome 1960

Put journalists in a foreign land for more than two weeks, and their minds eventually will wander to carnal pleasures ... and "easy" stories. Beijing Olympic organizers provided 100,000 condoms to participating athletes. But such acceptance of foreign affairs wasn't always the case. Take this excerpt from the recent book Rome 1960 by David Maraniss, which is chock-full of interesting details from those Olympic games:

One place the men could not go was inside the women's quarters, a separate sector on the other side of a raised highway and cordoned off by an iron gate and eight-foot wire fence. Village guards roamed the perimeter, and a no-nonsense Italian matron, Signora Ernestina Cabella Nardi, was stationed at the entry gate, deputized to separate the 611 female Olympians from the thousands of eager young men on the other side.

That anecdote is quickly followed by references to sexist and pervy journalists covering the games, which goes to show that while sexual permissiveness may change, some things will always stay the same.