SOME UNKNOWN FACTS ABOUT OLYMPICS

FACTS ABOUT OLMPICS:

• The First olympic games took place in the 8th century B.C in olympia, Greece. They were held every four years for 12 centuries. Then, in the 4th century A.D., all pagan festivals were banned by Emperor Theodosius I and the Olympics were no more.
• However, the athletic tradition was resurrected about 1500 years later; The first modern Olympics were held in 1896 in Greece.
• TARZAN competed in the olympics; Johnny Weissmuller, an athlete-turned-actor who played Tarzan in 12 movies, won five gold medals in swimming in the 1920s.
• From 1912-1948, artists participated in the olympics; painters, sculptors, architects, writters and musicians competed for medals in their respective fields.
• During the 1936 Berlin games, two Japanese pole-vaulters tied for second place. Instead of competing again, they cut the silver and bronze medals in half and fused the two different halves together so that each of them had a half-silver and half-bronze medal.
• The Olympic torch is lit the old-fashioned way in an ancient ceremony at the temple of Hera, in Greece; Actresses, wearing costumes of Greek priestesses, use a parabolic mirror and sun rays kindle the torch.
• From there, the Torch starts its relay to host city; It is usually carried by runners, but its traveled on a boat, on an airplane, on horseback, on the back of a camel, via radio signal, underwater and in a canoe.
• The five rings of the Olympics symbol-designed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, co-founder of the modern Olympics games-represent the five inhabited continents of the world.
• The six colors- blue, yellow, black, green, red, and the white background- were chosen because every nation's flag contains at least one of them.
• Only three modern Olympics games have been canceled ( The games were canceled due to world war 1-1916 and world war 2-1940,1944)
• Gold medals are mostly made of silver. Today's Olympic gold medal is an imposter, made almost entirely from silver with approximately 6 grams of gold to meet the standard laid out in the Olympic charter.
• The first Olympic drug suspension did not occur until 1968 ( Hans-gunnar liljenwall, a swedish pentathlete, tested positive for alcohol.
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