Olympic moments that made history: if you think the Olympic Games are only about athletic competition, think again.

• Author: Majerol, Veronica
• Position: TIMES PAST

In August, athletes from more than 150 nations will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the first Olympics ever to be held in South America (see p. 6). The global sporting event--which takes place every two years, alternating between summer and winter events--has its roots in the ancient Greek competitions in Olympia that began in 776 B.C.

While the modern Games are still a celebration of athleticism and sportsmanship, they're also much more than that, often reflecting social and political trends in the world at large. Thus, the Olympic arena has been used to protest racism, stage propaganda, and play out Cold War battles. It's where disabled athletes have sometimes tested their limits, and where some athletes have cheated their way to gold medals with banned performance-enhancing drugs. Tragically, in the 1970s, the Olympics also became a target for terrorists. Here we spotlight 10 Olympic moments that transcended sports.

1896 | Athens, Greece FIRST MODERN OLYMPICS

You can thank a French baron for the modern Olympic Games. More than 1,500 years after the ancient Greek Olympics were banned by a Christian Roman emperor who thought they were too pagan, Pierre de Coubertin proposed reviving the Olympics as an international sporting event. Other countries agreed, and 13 nations participated in the first modern Games in 1896 in Athens. Notably missing, however, were women. De Coubertin argued that including women would be "impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect." But four years later, in the Paris Olympics, women were allowed to compete in a few sports, including lawn tennis and golf. A lot has changed since. In the 2012 London Games, women made up 44 percent of all Olympic athletes and participated in every event, including boxing.

1936 | Berlin, Germany JESSE OWENS VS. HITLER

When Germany hosted the Olympic Games in 1936, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler hoped to use the global stage to advance his Nazi propaganda. According to Hitler, Germans belonged to a master "Aryan" race--blond-haired, blue-eyed people who were intellectually and athletically superior to all other races.

But Hitler's racist views were turned on their head at the Berlin Games with the stunning performance of black American track-and-field star Jesse Owens. The son of a sharecropper and grandson of slaves, Owens won gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter dashes, the long jump, and on America's 4x100 relay team. He also became the first American to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad.

The U.S. and other nations had nearly boycotted the Games altogether to protest Hitler's exclusion of German Jews and Roma (Gypsies). Many historians now say that a coordinated boycott might have shown Hitler early on that the world wouldn't stand for his racist and anti-Semitic views--and perhaps could have helped avert some of the horrors of the Nazi reign: In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the start of World War II, which killed tens of millions of people. And by the war's end in 1945, the Nazis had systematically murdered 6 million Jews.

As for Owens, he didn't get to shake Hitler's hand after his remarkable Olympic feats. Nor did he get a hero's welcome in the U.S., where racism was rampant at the time. It wasn't until 1976 that Owens was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor for an American civilian. Eight years later, in 1984, Germany named a street in Berlin for Owens.

1964 Tokyo, Japan FIRST GLOBAL TV BROADCAST

More than 200 million people around the world tuned in to the 2012 Olympics. But before 1964, when the opening ceremonies were broadcast live on TV worldwide for the first time, you had to fly to the host city and pay a steep admission fee to see any part of the Olympic action.

"Television changed everything," says Stephen Wenn, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, who has written on the topic. "It fueled the popularity of the Olympic Games."

Ironically, the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) initially feared TV would hurt revenue, since people could now watch the Games from home for free. What It didn't foresee was that TV would give rise to advertising, marketing, and sponsorships that would turn the Olympics into the multibillion-dollar industry it is today.

1968 | Mexico City 'BLACK POWER' SALUTE

The 1960s were a turbulent time, with protests rocking America over the Vietnam War and civil rights for blacks. At the Mexico City Games, black American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos decided to stage a protest of their own--for all the world to see. During a playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the gold and bronze winners in the 200-meter race gave the "black power" salute. The raised fist was often used to express solidarity among oppressed people but was most famously associated with the militant Black Panther group. (Australian Peter Norman showed his support by wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge.) Spectators were stunned silent, then grew hostile, hurling insults at the men. In a 2011 interview with the news program Democracy Now, Carlos reflected on his defiant act. "We felt it was something that was necessary to make a statement to society that all is not well," he said. "We felt that it was for our kids and our kids' kids."

1972 Munich, Germany THE 'TERROR OLYMPICS'

On the morning of Sept. 5, 1972, eight Palestinians from the terrorist group Black September broke into an Olympic complex in Munich that housed the Israeli team. They killed two...