On this day · archive
Munich opens the XX Olympiad
The 1972 Summer Olympics opened in Munich as a public festival of international sport. The violence that followed would permanently alter how those Games are remembered.
8
events in todayish file
1972
The Games of the XX Olympiad open in Munich, West Germany.
The 1972 Summer Olympics began with an international ceremony before violence later transformed the Games’ public memory.
On August 26, 1972, the Games of the XX Olympiad opened in Munich, West Germany. Athletes and spectators gathered for an international festival intended to place sport at the center of public attention.
An opening ceremony presents the Olympics as a shared civic stage: delegations enter, symbols pass from host to host, and competition has not yet separated winners from the field.
The terrorist attack that followed in September killed members of the Israeli Olympic team and a West German police officer. That violence does not erase the opening, but it permanently changed the meaning carried by the words “Munich 1972.”
The full record
8 entries from the day’s archive, filed year by year with a note on what each one leaves behind.
Exactly 5 years after the 2018 Jacksonville Landing shooting, there is another shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, leaving 3 people dead.
Three people were killed in a racially motivated attack at a Jacksonville store.
Violence
During the 2021 Kabul airlift, a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport kills 13 US military personnel and at least 169 Afghan civilians.
The bombing struck the Kabul evacuation, killing Afghan civilians and U.S. service members.
Violence
Three people are killed and eleven wounded during a mass shooting at a Madden NFL '19 video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida.
The tournament shooting killed three people and wounded eleven.
Violence
The Jay Report into the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal is published.
The report documented child exploitation and institutional failures in Rotherham.
Civic
Kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard is discovered alive in California after being missing for over 18 years. Her captors, Phillip and Nancy Garrido, are apprehended.
Her discovery ended more than eighteen years of captivity and led to her captors’ arrests.
Crime
The first Boeing Delta III flight fails 75 seconds after liftoff, destroying the Galaxy X communications satellite.
The failed launch destroyed its communications-satellite payload.
Disaster
The Games of the XX Olympiad open in Munich, West Germany.
The opening began a Games later marked by the terrorist attack on the Israeli team.
Sports
Haiti’s legislature proclaims President Faustin Soulouque emperor, ending the First Republic and beginning the Second Empire.
The proclamation replaced a republic with Haiti’s second imperial government.
Politics