The Olympics are here and I thought I would have a look at some Fun Olympic facts to get you in the mood for the competition.

1/ 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 (42.2 kilometres)? Was because of the rather whimsical demand of Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, who decreed in 1908 that the marathon should end below the royal box at London’s White City Stadium, which added the extra 385 yards!

2/ The word "gymnasium" comes from the Greek root "gymnos" meaning nude; the literal meaning of "gymnasium" is "school for naked exercise." Athletes in the ancient Olympic Games would participate in the nude.

3/ The first Paralympic Games was held in 1948. The name 'Paralympics' comes from the words 'Parallel' and 'Olympics'.

4/ The record for the most gold medals awarded in one Olympic Games went to American swimmer Mark Spitz in 1972. He won SEVEN gold medals! The US swimming sensation Michael Phelps is trying to top that at the Athens Olympics by going for Eight gold medals.

5/ The Olympic symbol consists of five circles or rings. These five circles stand for the five continents. The colours in the circle are green yellow, blue red and black.

6/ In 1900 Australian Donald MacIntosh came third in the live pigeon shooting event, the first and only time animals were killed on purpose in an Olympic event. Donald won by killing 21 of the birds.

7/ The early Olympic Games were celebrated as a religious festival from 776 B.C. until 393 A.D., when the games were banned for being a pagan festival (the Olympics celebrated the Greek god Zeus).

8/ The first Olympics covered by U.S. television was the 1960 Summer Games in Rome by CBS.

9/ Four Boeing 747 jumbo jets could have fitted side by side in the Olympic Stadium in Australia.

10/ The Olympic flame is a practice continued from the ancient Olympic Games. In Olympia (Greece), a flame was ignited by the sun and then kept burning until the closing of the Olympic Games. The flame first appeared in the modern Olympics at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. The flame itself represents a number of things, including purity and the endeavor for perfection. In 1936, the chairman of the organizing committee for the 1936 Olympic Games, Carl Diem, suggested what is now the modern Olympic Torch relay. The Olympic flame is lit at the ancient site of Olympia by women wearing ancient-style robes and using a curved mirror and the sun. The Olympic Torch is then passed from runner to runner from the ancient site of Olympia to the Olympic stadium in the hosting city. The flame is then kept alight until the Games have concluded. The Olympic Torch relay represents a continuation from the ancient Olympic Games to the modern Olympics.