Week 6

The tradition of the Inaugural Committee with the consent of the newly elected president to issue an official inaugural medal began in 1901 with the second inauguration of William McKinley. Mintages were quite low for the medals prior to the 1949 inauguration of Harry S. Truman making them much more difficult and expensive to obtain. The popularity of the inaugural medal increased dramatically in 1961 with the inauguration of John F. Kennedy and mintage figures have been increasing ever since. Two vice-presidents have also been honored with medals issued for their swearing-in ceremonies - Gerald Ford in 1973 and Nelson Rockefeller in 1974

Week 5

Flame races were run in ancient Athens to honour deities including Prometheus, who, legend has it, stole fire from the gods and brought wisdom and knowledge to humankind.
A fire was kept burning at ancient Olympics to honour the sun god Zeus
Fire first reappeared at the modern Olympics in Amsterdam in 1928, when a flame was built into an Olympic stadium tower. It was seen as a symbolic link between old and new games.

Week 4

The Olympic rings were designed by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games. The symbol first appeared in the Paris magazine "Le Bon Marche" in 1913 and it was approved at the Olympic Congress in 1914.
De Coubertin originally intended the symbol to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the modern Olympics in 1916, but the Games were cancelled because of World War I. At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, the Olympic flag was hoisted for the first time and the rings became the official Olympic symbol. The flag has the five rings on a white background, with no border.
The rings were meant to represent the five previous modern Olympic games. However, they soon came to represent the five continents.
The top three rings are blue, black, and red; the bottom two are yellow and green. The colors were chosen because every country in the world uses at least one of them (including the white background) on its official flag.
It's often said each ring represents a specific continent, but the IOC says that isn't so. For the record, though, here are the continents that the rings are said to represent:
Blue - Europe
Black - Africa
Red - America
Yellow - Asia
Green - Oceania
The Olympic flag is hoisted during the opening ceremony and lowered at the closing ceremony to signify the end of the Games.
The rings were first shown on Olympic medals for the 1928 Winter Olympics, and they've appeared on all Winter Olympic medals since then. However, they didn't show up on Summer Olympic medals until the 1956 equestrian competition, which was held in Sweden because of Austtralia's embargo against bringing horses into the country. Since 1976, they've also appeared on the medals at all Summer Olympics.

Week Three

http://www.janecky.com/olympics/motto.html

The Olympic Motto
The Olympic motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius." These three Latin words mean "Swifter, Higher, Stronger." Baron de Coubertin borrowed the motto from Father Henri Martin Dideon, the headmaster of Arcueil College in Paris. Father Dideon used the motto to describe the great achievements of the athletes at his school. Coubertin felt it could be used to describe the goals of great athletes all over the World.

Home Work Week 2

Sporting contests originally held in Olympia, ancient Greece, every four years during a sacred truce; records were kept from 776 BC. Women were forbidden to be present, and the male contestants were naked. The ancient Games were abolished in AD 394. The present-day games have been held every four years since 1896. Since 1924 there has been a separate winter Games programme; since 1994 the winter and summer Games have been held two years apart.

History Of Ancient Olympics

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/olympics/a/aa021798.htm

The first Olympic Games were held in 776 B.C. (traditional date) and the last in A.D. 393, when the Christian Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I abolished them. The Ancient Greek Olympics were held every 4 years at Olympia, a district of Elis, in Southern Greece [see Bb on the map], where all free Greek men were entitled to compete. During the Imperial period of Rome, the Olympic Games became more ecumenical. (Kyle, p. 333.)

These are somme games they held:
Boxing
Discus (part of Pentathlon)
Equestrian Events
Javelin (part of Pentathlon)
Jumping
Pankration
Pentathlon
Running
Wrestling