Montreal bid for the Winter Olympics, first in 1944 - cancelled due to World War Two - and then again in 1956. The city also lost out in its bid for the Summer Olympics in 1956 and 1972, finally winning the 1976 Summer Olympics in 1970. Several venues used for those Games were already in existence before Montreal made its first Olympic bid in the late 1930s. The oldest of these was the Varisty Stadium, originally built in 1898 and which hosted football during Montreal 1976. The Molson Stadium, which staged hockey, meanwhile, had been constructed in 1903.

America's men's basketball team scored an Olympic record 156 points when they beat Nigeria at London 2012. The record fell when Andre Igoudala hit a three-point shot to make it 139-68, surpassing the previous record of 138 scored by Brazil against Egypt at Seoul 1988. The United States scored 78 points in the first half alone, beating the previous Olympic record of 72, set by that same Brazil team against China in Seoul. The US had 49 points by the end of the first quarter and reached triple figures midway through the third. In total, they made 59-of-83 shots from the field, including 29-of-46 from three-point range.

Lasting a total of 187 days, or six months and four days, London 1908 was the longest in modern Olympics history. They were opened on April 27 by King Edward VII and finally closed on October 31. They were held alongside the Franco-British Exhibition, an event that attracted eight million visitors and celebrated the Entente Cordiale signed in 1904 by the United Kingdom and France and which initially attracted more interest among the public and media. 

Jeu de paume was contested at the 1908 Olympics in London, the only occasion it has been a medal sport. An outdoor version called longue paume was a demonstration sport at Paris in 1900..Real tennis, as jeu de paume is called in the United Kingdom, was also an exhibition event at Paris 1924. In the Official Report of the 1908 Olympic Games, the sport is referred to as "Tennis (jeu de paume)" while tennis is named "lawn tennis." The competition was held at the Queen's Club in West Kensington and won by American Jay Gould II, grandson of the railroad magnate Jay Gould.

India, still a British colony, was forced to march behind the Union Jack at the Opening Ceremony at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but the hockey players saluted the flag of the Indian National Congress before their 8-1 gold-medal victory over Germany in which a barefoot Dhyan Chand scored a hat-trick. Nicknamed "the Wizard," Chand is perhaps the greatest hockey player in the history of the sport, and all kinds of legends have sprouted from that match, including that Chand scored six goals - a myth he dispelled in his 1952 autobiography, Goal! Another myth is the score could have been even more lopsided: Once the outcome seemed decided, India would move the ball into scoring position but would not attempt a shot on goal. A second story tells of Adolf Hitler offering Chand a chance to become a German citizen and military officer. A third, however, has Hitler leaving the match at halftime.

The first official poster produced for the Olympic Games was at Stockholm in 1912. After a thorough examination of several sketches sent in, and after having conferred with prominent Swedish artists in the matter, the Swedish Olympic Committee, chose a design by Olle Hjortzberg, of the Royal Academy, which had been sent in to the Committee in 1910, but had afterwards been slightly altered, representing the march of the nations - each athlete with a waving flag - to the common goal of the Olympic Games. The poster proved so popular that it needed to be reprinted several times to satisfy demand.

Lacrosse has been held in two Olympic Games, St Louis 1904 and London 1908. Both times it was open only to men and both times a Canadian team won the gold medal. At St Louis 1904, three teams from United States and Canada competed with Canadian team Shamrock triumphing. The second appearance, at London four years later, saw only two teams, from Canada and Great Britain, compete. Lacrosse was also held as a demonstration event at Amsterdam 1928, Los Angeles 1932 and London 1948.

The 1956 Olympics in Melbourne were affected by a number of boycotts. Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon announced they would not participate in the Games in response to the Suez Crisis when Egypt was invaded by Israel, Britain and France after Egypt nationalised the Suez canal. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian Revolution, leading to the withdrawal of the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. Less than two weeks before the Opening Ceremony November, the People's Republic of China chose to boycott the event because Taiwan, officially the Republic of China had been allowed to compete.China did not compete in the Olympics again until Los Angeles 1984.

During the pole vault at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the crowd supporting the Soviet Union's Konstantin Volkov booed, hissed, jeered, and whistled his main rival, Poland's Władysław Kozakiewicz. Following his victory, Kozakiewicz responded with an obscene bent elbow gesture which was widely supported in Polish society, which resented Soviet control over Eastern Europe. The Soviet Ambassador to Poland demanded Kozakiewicz be stripped of his medal over his "insult to the Soviet people". The official response of the Polish Government was that Kozakiewicz's arm gesture had been an involuntary muscle spasm. To this day the act is still referred to in Poland as "Kozakiewicz's gesture".

The very first British Empire Games in Hamilton, Canada, in 1930, were the result of a remarkable feat of organisation. The decision to hold the Games was only finally confirmed in February 1930, yet by August of that same year all the preparations had been completed. The Games ran at a cost of $97,973.00 and featured six sports: aquatics (swimming and diving), athletics, boxing, lawn bowls, rowing and wrestling. The Athletes' Village was the Prince of Wales School next to the Civic Stadium, where the competitors slept two dozen to a classroom, while the women were housed in a separate hotel. Eleven countries sent a total of 400 athletes to the Games.

At the rowing during the 1900 Olympics in Paris, The Netherlands' coxed pair of Francois Brandt and Roelof Klein needed to find a coxswain to replace Hermanus Brockmann after they sacked him because they thought he was too heavy and was jeopardising their chances. They chose a 10-year-old French boy from the crowd and raced to the gold medal, ahead of the host nation. The youngster joined the Dutch at the victory ceremony and even had his photograph taken with them, although it is not believed he received a medal. His identity was never established and still remains a mystery. But he is probably the youngest gold medallist in Olympic history.

At the first ten Olympic Games of the modern era, the medals were presented at the Closing Ceremony. But, at Los Angeles 1932 each victory ceremony took place shortly after the end of each event, a tradition that was adopted at subsequent Games and that has become a permanent feature. Los Angeles also introduced the tiered victory podium on which the three medallists stand to receive their awards and was also the first Games to see the gold medallist honoured with the raising of his national flag and the playing of their national anthem during the presentation.

Charles Simmons, a member of the British gymnastics team that won Olympic bronze medals at Stockholm 1912, was the father of actress Jean Simmons. She starred in several successful films, including Great Expectations in 1946, The Big Country in 1958, Elmer Gantry and Spartacus, both in 1960. Sadly, Simmons missed his daughter's success as he died in 1945.

The 1960 Olympic road cycling race in Rome was marred by the death of Denmark's Knut Enemark, who collapsed from sunstroke in the 100 plus degrees heat and suffered a fractured skull. It was later revealed that before the race Enemark had taken Ronicol, a blood circulation stimulant. But the three Italian physicians who performed the autopsy submitted a final report claiming Jensen's death was caused by heatstroke, and no drugs were found in his body. Years later, Alvaro Marchiori, one of the doctors who conducted the autopsy, claimed they had "found traces of several things", including amphetamines. Jensen's death led the International Olympic Committee to form a medical committee in 1961 and drugs testing at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.

The first person known to defect at an Olympic Games came at London 1948 when Marie Provaznikova, leader of the Czechoslovakian women's gymnastics team, refused to return home because "there is no freedom of speech, of the press or of assembly". After a few months' stay in England she moved to the United States and resided there for the rest of her life, teaching PE and organising Sokol units in America and internationally. She died in 1992, at the age of 100.