364 B.C. The Elians violate the sacred Olympic truce, sending thousands of warriors into the games as the pentathletes gathered for the wrestling matches. The Elians are beaten back.

A.D. 393 Roman Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolishes the games because of pagan influences.

Modern Olympics

1896 Baron Pierre de Coubertin persuades Athens to revive the Olympics. The games, dedicated to peace, inspire such a surge of Greek pride that Greece invades the Ottoman Empire the next year. The invasion fails.

1908 The British hosts of the London games don't let the Irish team carry their country's flag. Russia, ruler of Finland, bans the Finnish banner. The two teams decide to march flagless–first of many flag fracases.

1912 2nd Lt. George Patton's poor shooting score drops him to fifth place in the pentathlon.

1916 Berlin games canceled (World War I).

1920 The games resume, sans the villains of WWI: Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Turkey.

1936 Jesse Owens, a black sharecropper's son, wins four golds in Berlin, foiling Hitler's plans to display "Aryan" superiority.

1940 Tokyo rescinds its bid to host the summer games: too busy invading China. Both summer and winter games (also slated for Japan) are eventually canceled after Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland.

1944 Canceled again.

1948 Germany and Japan stay home. Birger Ruud, 37, a Norwegian Holocaust survivor, wins silver in ski jumping at St. Moritz, Switzerland.

1952 In the midst of the Korean War, the Soviets won't let the torch cross their territory en route from Greece to Oslo for the winter games. But they enter the summer games, their first Olympics, out to prove Communists are best.

1956 The Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Suez crisis prompt half a dozen nations to pull out. But at the closing ceremony, athletes break national ranks to sing and dance.

1972 Palestinian terrorists kill 11 Israelis in Munich. Golda Meir says the games should go on; they do, after a day of mourning.

1980 Lake Placid's winter games are held in the midst of the U.S.S.R. invasion of Afghanistan. U.S. amateurs beat Soviet hockey pros in the "Miracle on Ice." President Carter orders a boycott of the summer games in Moscow.

1984 The Russians boycott the Los Angeles games in retaliation. Libya withdraws after two journalists are denied entry because the U.S. believes that they are terrorists.

1992 German athletes compete on the same team for the first time since 1964. Banned since 1960, South Africa returns with its first multiracial team.

2000 North and South Korea, technically still at war, unite behind the Olympic flag at Sydney's opening ceremony.