By dispatching women tennis players on world tours, the US Department of State hoped to garner approval for the American way of life.

American racers earned a reputation for deception, and Cuckoo Collins led the pack with an outsize talent for cheating.

The sport of Newcomb ball was created by Clara Gregory Baer two years before volleyball. Now forgotten, it's a good bet it lives on in the gyms and beach courts of today.

In the early days of ballooning, launches were prone to failure. When failure looked imminent, the crowd’s mood would begin to turn.

The 1932 Winter Olympics were a small foreshadowing of what was to come in 1936 Berlin.

Flab, begone! Earle Edwin Liederman wanted men to learn his vaudeville-strongman secrets—for a not-so-low price.

It might have been a ploy to garner Democratic votes, but the president took his dream team seriously.

Olympic athletes are divided into teams of nations. To Indigenous competitors, though, that can mean representing oppressive settler-colonial states.

The heavyweight champion lost his title when he refused induction into the military during the Vietnam War.

Hardy athletes called pedestriennes wowed the sporting world of the nineteenth century. They also shocked guardians of propriety.