According to historical records, the first ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to 776 BC. They were dedicated to the Olympian gods and were staged on the ancient plains of Olympia. They continued for nearly 12 centuries, until Emperor...

Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin was a French educator and historian, and founder of the International Olympic Committee. He is considered the father of the modern Olympic Games. The ancient Olympic Games were held every four years in th...

Duke Kahanamoku, known as the "Big Kahuna," was an Olympic champion swimmer who is generally credited with having invented the modern sport of surfing. He was the first person to be inducted into both the Swimming Hall of Fame and the Surfi...

Greece was the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games. The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896. The International Olympic Committee was founded on 23 June 1894 by the French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin who was ins...

Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian-born American competition swimmer and actor, best known for playing Tarzan in films of the 1930s and 1940s and for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century. Weissmull...

Jesse Owens was an African American track-and-field star famous for his performance at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Before the eyes of the Nazi leadership, who had hoped to use the games as a source of propaganda for Aryan nationalism,...

Antonius "Anton" Johannes Geesink was a Dutch 10th-dan judoka. He was a three-time World Judo Champion (1961, 1964 and 1965) and Olympic Gold Medalist (1964). He was 6'6" (1.98m) tall and at one time weighted 320 pounds (145 kg). He was bor...

The Munich massacre was an attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, by eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, who took nine members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, after killing two of...