Welcome to StackExchange Daniel. You are probably talking about this view: /civicrm/event?reset=1 which indeed only shows upcoming events and recents registrations.

There is another page ("Manage Events" /civicrm/event/manage?reset=1) that allows you to search and filter for events or show all events including past ones.

You could of course also create a report to list all (relevant) events and/or participants.