In ancient Greece, the Olympic flame was lit using the sun rays concentrated by a parabolic mirror at the Temple of Hera. The flame stays ablaze throughout the event. As the modern Olympics are conducted at different venues far away from Greece, the flame is lit months in advance at the Olympia lighting ceremony and carried using torches to the venue’s cauldron. There have been many incidents in which the torches, and once even the cauldron, had gone out. To prevent this, more than one torch is used.
16. In the 1968 Olympics, Bob Beamon’s long jump went beyond the range of the official optical measuring device. The distance had to be measured manually and being unfamiliar with the metric system, he didn’t realize until his coach told him that he had broken the world record by nearly 2 feet.
Bob Beamon’s world record was so outstanding that it wasn’t broken for almost 23 years. Mike Powell broke the record by around 5 centimeters at 8.95 meter record, Beamon’s being 8.90 meters. After his record, the sports jargon had a new adjective “Beamonesque” added to describe spectacular feats during the games.