The Omega watch company was in charge of the scoreboards for the 1976 Summer Olympics games in Montreal, when they approached the International Olympic Committee with an odd question. The scoreboard, Omega noted, had only three digits. What would happen if someone got a 10.00? The IOC officials responded that was impossible — no one in the nearly 100 year history had ever gotten a 10, and they did not foresee that happening. One the second day of the games, it did.

On this day, July 18, in 1976, the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, just fourteen years of age at the time, performed a flawless routine on the uneven bars, earning all 10s from the judges. On the scoreboard she read a 1.00.

And she was just getting started. Before the games ended, Comaneci scored an astounding 10 three more times on the on the uneven bars and three times on the beam. Comaneci earned three gold medals, plus a team silver, and a bronze medal on the floor exercise. It was almost like she was replaced with a robot, the British Guardian newspaper noted in an article written just after the games. “She seemed almost inhuman in her exactness.”