1936 Summer Olympics

The 1936 summer Olympics were held in Berlin, Germany despite controversy over the host city that year, it was possibly going to be Barcelona, Spain before Berlin was selected. The 1936 Summer Olympics were awarded to Berlin before the Nazi party took power in Germany, but Hitler was in power by the time the games had taken place and the Germans wanted to make their Nazi beliefs known. The 1936 Summer Olympics became the first year that the torch was lit in Olympia, Greece and then passed by relay to Berlin. This was the second year the torch was used but previously it was not passed off by the relay system. This was also the first year that the Olympic Games had television coverage and there were forty nine nations in attendance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, twelve more than in 1932. There were also six nations that made their first Olympic appearance that year including, Burmuda, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Liechtenstein, Peru, and Afghanistan.

There were many other firsts that happened during the 1936 Summer Olympics, such as basketball first appearing in the Olympic Games but it had some issues the first year with a final game with an extremely low score and the USA defeating Canada nineteen to eight. The first Olympic basketball was played outside in pouring rain on a muddy field, the players could not even dribble which is why the score was so low and all the fans that came to watch had to stand in the rain since no seating was available for them, and there were only about one thousand spectators. Baseball and gliding were the demonstration sports of the 1936 Summer Olympics the following two scheduled Summer Olympics were cancelled due to the outbreak of the war so the Olympic Games were not played again until 1948 after the war had ended.