For all its glamour and prestige, the Olympics has also delivered its fair share of colorful personalities and bizarre incidents over the years. Here, we look back at some of the athletes and occurrences that have made headlines—and raised eyebrows—at the Olympic Games.



Going it alone

The Games of the I Olympiad were held in Athens in 1896. Lasting 10 days and staging only nine events, the inaugural spectacle was an all-male affair. Women were not allowed to compete. But one headstrong lady wasn't going to let that deter her. Enter Stamata Revithi. She was desperate to take part in the long-distance race. Denied by the event organizers, as a gesture of protest, Revithi ran the race alone the next day, taking five hours to complete the course. The crowd soon warmed to her and subsequently gave her the nickname Melpomene, after the Greek muse of tragedy.

At the 1932 Summer Games held in Los Angeles, only 24 members of Brazil's Olympic team of 69 actually competed! Brazil was so poor from the Great Depression that the only way it could get the athletes to the U.S. was to pack them on a barge with 25 tons of coffee to sell at ports along the way. The U.S. required a $1 head tax per person entering the country, but the team, apparently not as adept at sales as at athletics, managed to sell only $24 worth of coffee. The only hope of getting the whole team ashore rested on the Brazilian consulate in San Francisco, who sent out a courier with a check written out for the equivalent of $45. By the time the courier arrived in L.A., however, the Brazilian currency devalued so much that the check was only worth $17. To add insult to injury, the check bounced!