1932 Summer Olympics

The 1932 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the X Olympiad, were held in 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. No other cities made a bid to host these Olympics. Held during the worldwide Great Depression, many nations and athletes were unable to pay for the trip to Los Angeles. Fewer than half the number of participants from the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam competed in 1932.

Highlights

An Olympic Village was built for the first time, occupied by the male athletes. The village is now a part of the nearby University of Southern California.
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was known in 1932 as Olympic Stadium.
Tenth Street, a major throughfare in Los Angeles, was renamed Olympic Boulevard in honor of the Games.
Babe Didrikson won two gold medals in the javelin and the hurdles event, and competed in a jump-off for a third in the high jump. Her technique in the jump-off was ruled illegal, leaving Didrikson with second place.
In field hockey, only three nations took part. The host nation lost 1-24 to India and 2-9 to Japan but still won a bronze medal.
Poland's Stanisława Walasiewicz won the gold medal in the women's 100 meters; she would also win the silver medal in the event four years later. After her death in 1980, it was discovered that she was intersex and would have been ineligible to particpate.
Finnish star Paavo Nurmi was barred from competing in the Olympics for being a professional.
Eddie Tolan won both the 100m and 200m sprint events.
Helene Madison won three gold medals in swimming, while the Japanese upset the men's events and take all but one title.

Trivia

Only 24 members of Brazil's olympic team of 69 competed. Brazil was so poor from the Great Depression that the only way they could get the team to Los Angeles was to put them on a barge with 25 tons of coffee to sell to ports on the way. They only managed to sell US$24 worth of coffee and the United States required a $1 head tax per person entering the country. Their absolute last 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 US$45, but by the time he arrived in L.A., the Brazilian cruzeiro (which the check was written out in) was severely devalued to the point the check was only worth about $17, and to make matters worse, nobody would cash the check at all.