All you wanted to know about Olympics

- Olympics have a history of almost 3,000 years. The first written record about Olympics date back to 776 BC. Greeks used to celebrate these events in honour of Zeus- the thunder god.

- The games were named as Olympics after the place called Olympia at southern Greece, where the games used to be held.

- Though the Olympic Games got famous in Greece, they were suspended after the Romans occupied Greece and destroyed their religious places.

- In 18th century, a French baron named Pierre de Coubertin got interested in reviving Olympic Games after visiting the ancient site of Olympics.

- Pierre de Coubertin formed a sports body named International Olympics committee (IOC) in 1894 which organised first modern day Olympics in 1896.

- The first Olympics were held in Athens (Greece), where 280 participants from 13 nations have competed in 43 events.

- In 1921 Olympics were divided into summer and winter Olympics. Winter Olympics were organised to conduct games involving snow and ice. The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924 at France.

- From 1948 'Paralympics' were being held for the disabled. These Paralympics were initially started to encourage the veterans of II world war. In 2010 special Olympics were started for youth between 14-18 years of age called as 'Youth Olympics'.

- Most of us are aware of the symbol of Olympics with five rings. These five rings represent five continents in the world and they are blue, yellow, black, green, and red in colour. These five colours are chosen because, every nation in this world contains at least one of those colours in its national flag.

- The Olympic flame is lit many days before the commencement of the games. It was lit in Olympia and brought to the main stadium of current Olympics on the first day of the event.

- The modern day Olympics were cancelled thrice.. all due to the World Wars. They were cancelled in 1916 due to the First World War. They were suspended in 1940 and 1944 due to Second World War.

- This year, Olympics were being held in Rio de Janeiro of Brazil. It will be the first time in Olympic history that a South American country is hosting the Games. But these games were being shadowed by Zika virus and political turmoil in Brazil.