Sunday, August 24, 2008

Olympic Trivia PS

Put this in a comment and decided to make it a post. The New York Times has a brilliant graphic which interactively shows the medal tallies for nations from 1896 to the present.

Also, where should the Olympics have been held in 1908, 1912, 1940 and 1944?

See the comment for the answer

2 comments:

Mike Peatman said...

1908 moved to London from Rome, due to volcanic activity of Vesuvius in 1906 requiring funds being diverted to Naples.

1916 should have been Berlin

1940 originally allocated to Tokyo, reallocated to Helsinki following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937.

1944 London

In 1946 London was given the games for 1948 by postal ballot!

2012 will be the first time London has held the Olympics proper, rather than getting them by accident of history.

Emma said...

I knew the 1944 one, didn't know the other facts. Thought that Paris was supposed to get it as well some time in the 2nd world war, I was clearly wrong on that one! Love the medals map, it's brilliant! You can even see from it when different countries boycotted, like the lack of the USA in 1980 and no African medals in '76. Brilliant.