YOU PROBABLY
DIDN'T KNOW...
The USA has hosted the Olympics more than any other country.
Olympians in ancient Greece competed in the nude.
The Olympic Games were first televised in 1960 when they were held in Rome.
The estimated average cost of the Olympics is anywhere between $5 billion to several hundreds of billions of dollars.
The ancient Greeks started using the word "Olympiad" to describe a period of four years because the Olympics occured every four years
The Olympic symbol has five rings to represent the five major continents: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.
The Olympic symbol has five
colors (blue, green, yellow, black, and red) because at least one of these colors appears in all the national flags of the world.
Gold medals are made primarily out of silver, not gold.
During WWI and WWII, the Olympics were canceled three times and have not been canceled since*.
Women were officially allowed to compete starting in the 1900 Olympic Games
English and French are the official language of the Olympics, followed by the language of the hosting city.
The youngest person to compete in the Games was a 10-year-old gymnast named Dimitrios Loundras during the 1896 Olympics.
The first sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal was the marathon runner Abebe Bikila. He ran all 26 miles (42 kilometers) barefoot during the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
Great Britain is the only
country to have won at least one gold medal at every
Summer Olympics.
The Olympic motto is made up of three Latin words: CITIUS - ALTIUS - FORTIUS. This translates to
“Faster - Higher - Stronger.”
During the opening ceremony, the procession always begins with the team from Greece and ends with the hosting country’s team.
A new city is chosen to hold the Olympic Games and that city is
responsible for hosting the Games, not the individual country.
*The 2020 Summer Olympics have not been canceled, but postponed to Summer 2021