The longest torch relay in Olympic history is under way, plagued
by protests against the Games' host nation, China. But this
isn't the first time Olympic emotions have been inflamed. 1 The
Nazis invented the Olympic torch relay. Fire was an Olympic
symbol in ancient Greece, and torch relays were conducted apart
from the Olympics. But the Nazis first combined those elements
to create pageantry and propaganda before the 1936 Berlin Games.
On its way to Germany, the torch went through Greece, Bulgaria,
Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Within six
years, Nazi Germany had annexed or occupied all of those
countries. 2 The torch has been transported by canoe, steamboat,
parachute, camel and Concorde. Before the 1976 Montreal Games,
it traveled by satellite, sort of. A sensor in Greece detected
the "ionized particles" of the torch and transmitted coded
impulses by satellite to Canada, where they activated a laser
beam that "re-created" the Olympic flame. 3 Before the 1956
Melbourne Games, a group of Au