History
Work on the stadium, the Deutsches Stadion ("German Stadium"), began in 1912 at what was the Grunewald Race Course. It was planned to seat over 18,000 spectators. On 8 June 1913 the stadium was dedicated with the release of 10,000 pigeons. 60,000 people were in attendance.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, organization continued as no one expected that the war would continue for several years. Eventually, though, the Games were cancelled.
A winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and nordic skiing was planned; the concept of this week eventually gave rise to the Winter Olympic Games. The central venue was to have been the Deutsches Stadion. Berlin returned to Olympic bidding in 1931, when it beat Barcelona, Spain for the right to host the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Read more about this topic: 1916 Summer Olympics
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)