Live Pigeon Shooting took place in the 1900 Paris Games. Over
300 pigeons were slaughtered in an orgy of blood and feathers.
Though it's in dispute as to whether the event was sanctioned by the
Olympic council, there's no disputing that Parisian sidewalks were
cleaner for a brief period at the turn of the century. It was the only time
animals were killed on purpose during an Olympic event.
The Beijing Olympics, 2008, began at exactly 8:08:08 PM on
8/8/08 because the number 8 is considered lucky in China.
The Berlin 1936 Olympiad was the first games to be televised.
There is a study of the
2004 Athens Olympics which shows that athletes who wore red while
competing in "combat sports", such as wrestling, scored higher than
opponents wearing blue. Very interesting but no scientific evidence can
be produced say Will and Guy.
It wasn't until 1900 that women were allowed to participate in the
Olympic Games.
In 1928
Australian rower, Henry Pearce, stopped halfway through his
quarter-final race to let a family of ducks pass in front of his boat. The French competition overtook him, but Pearce managed to get back in
front and win the gold.
Trivia Question: What
do Olympiads VI, XII and XIII have in common?
Answer: They were each cancelled due to War.
Note their numbers were not rescheduled, and this is why there will have
been only 27 celebrations by Olympiad XXX.
See full Olympiad history
here.
Pierre de Coubertin, the late founder of the International Olympic
Committee [IOC], decided to send his heart to the site of ancient
Olympia in Greece, where it is kept in a monument. The rest of him is
buried in Lausanne, Switzerland.
No boxing was held at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics because
the sport was illegal in Sweden.
George Patton, who would later
become a famous U.S. general, competed in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics
pentathlon, an event combining pistol shooting, swimming, fencing, cross
country and steeplechase. Patton performed poorly in his best event,
pistols, but shined in fencing, defeating the French army champion. 'Old
Blood and Guts' finished fifth overall, the only non-Swede to make the
top seven.
Tug-o-war made its last appearance as an Olympic sport in
1920.
French athletes bent the rules at the 1932 Los Angeles
Olympics: despite 'Prohibition', they were allowed wine with their
meals.
The greatest star of the 1936 Berlin Olympics was the 10th
child born to an Alabama sharecropper family named Owens. He was not
born with the name Jesse, he was called James Cleveland Owens, and as a
child moved to his namesake city: Cleveland. A teacher asked his name,
and he said "J.C." The teacher thought he said "Jesse," and the boy was
too polite to disagree.
Another great Olympian, with Chicago ties,
was Johnny Weissmuller, the winner of five gold medals in swimming who
later starred as Tarzan in the movies. Weissmuller swam brilliantly in
the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and also in the waters off Chicago's North
Avenue Beach on a stormy day in July 1927. Weissmuller was training on
the lakefront with his brother Peter when a sudden storm swamped the
pleasure boat Favorite. The disaster killed 27 of the 71 people aboard,
mostly women and children, but the Weissmuller brothers rescued 11
people. He can really be considered a hero.
Ethiopian marathoner, Abebe Bikila, was the first man to successfully
defend the marathon title [1960 and 1964]. An interesting observation
was that he only wore shoes for the second victory.
Romanian gymnast
Nadia Comaneci scored perfect 10's seven times at the 1976 Montreal
games.
Discus thrower, Al Oerter, of the USA is the only
athlete to win his event in four consecutive Olympic Games. He won gold
medals and set new discus records in the 1956, 1960, 1964, and 1968
games. Only nine other athletes have even won their events twice in
succession in track and field competition.
During the 1972 Munich
Summer Olympics, Olga Korbut, the gymnast from the USSR was the media
darling. She was 17 years old and only stood 4ft 11in tall. [1.49
metres].
Poland's
Stella Walsh, [Stanislawa Walasiewicz] won the women's 100m race at the
1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, becoming the first woman to break the
12 second barrier. When she was killed in 1980, as an innocent victim in
a robbery attempt, an autopsy declared her to be a male.
For over 50 years there was an unsolved mystery concerning the
whereabouts of the original Olympic flag presented to the IOC by the
city of Antwerp, Belgium, following the closing ceremony of the 1920
Olympics. Then in 1977 at an Olympic Committee banquet a reporter
asked Haig "Hal" Prieste, a bronze medalist at the 1920 Olympics in
platform diving, about the stolen Olympic flag. Prieste stunned
the reporter with the reply, "I can help you with that, it's in my
suitcase."
Perhaps if they had called-in that famous Belgian detective Hercules
Poirot, he would have deduced that American swimmer Duke Kahanamoku was
behind the jape to climb the flagpole and take the flag. At a
special ceremony at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia Prieste, then
103, returned the Olympic flag. You can now see it at the Olympic
Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland; there is a plaque thanking Prieste for
returning it.
The reason the extra yards
were added to the running distance of the marathon to make the total
length a rather strange figure of 26 miles and 385 yards was because
of the rather whimsical demand of Queen Alexandra of Great Britain,
who demanded, in 1908, that the marathon should end below the royal
box at London's White City Stadium, which added the extra 385 yards.
The First Marathon: In 490 BCE, Pheidippides, a Greek soldier,
ran from Marathon to Athens [about 25 miles] to inform the Athenians
the outcome of the battle with invading Persians. The distance was
filled with hills and other obstacles; thus Pheidippides arrived in
Athens exhausted and with bleeding feet. After telling the
townspeople of the Greeks' success in the battle, Pheidippides fell
to the ground dead. In 1896, at the first modern Olympic Games, held
a race of approximately the same length in commemoration of
Pheidippides.
I was not talented enough to run and
smile at the same time - Emil Zatopek, champion Czechoslovakian distance
runner, when asked about unusual facial expression when running.
The
swimming and diving were held in part of the old moat ... it was the
clammiest, darkest place and the water was frigid. It looked bottomless
and black - Alice Landon, American Diver, on facilities at the
Antwerp Games of 1920.
One shouldn't be afraid to lose; this is
sport. One day you win; another day you lose. Of course, everyone wants
to be the best. This is normal. This is what sport is about. This is why
I love it. - Oksana Baiul, Olympic Gold Medalist
All I've done is
run fast. I don't see why people should make much fuss about that -
Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals at the 1948
Games
To anyone who has started out on a long campaign believing
that the gold medal was destined for him, the feeling when, all of a
sudden, the medal has gone somewhere else is quite indescribable. -
Sebastian Coe, after losing the 800m final in 1980.
The Olympic Torch
The Olympic torch passes through all 5 continents on its 79 day journey. Trivial
Question: when was this practice of relaying the torch first started?
Get a clean joke delivered to your inbox every
day, no strings attached, just part of our service. Free
subscription to
our Funny Joke of the Day email.
We have over 1,500 pages of funny pictures, clean jokes, stories and amusing videos. Please use the Search below to find a topic of particular interest:
Thought of the Day Subscription
Our offer is to email you an inspirational
'Thought of the day'. Your subscription is completely free of cost and there
are no adverts. Sign up for our 'Thought of
the Day'.
