I am closing this question. I see the 'past event' when I click IN an upcoming event, scroll to the bottom and navigate backwards on the now visible event(s).
Cass,
Thanks for testing but note that my site is using 7.0 (can you validate this?)
At any rate yes I can select all past events but 1) there is no "save" feature and 2) after all selected, they still don't show at bottom of my "Upcoming Events" page.
Is this because I'm on 7.0 or because there is no "save" or "publish" button to effect those choices earlier checked? How can I get the same result as you did with your testing?