If a South Korean athlete wins an Olympic medal, male winners become exempt from the country’s mandatory two-year military service. In the military volatile region, this may have huge pull in the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games.
There hasn’t been a solid gold Olympic medal since 1912.
In fact, regulations state that gold medals must be at least 92.5 percent silver and plated with as few as six grams of gold.
They can still be worth their weight in gold.
Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko auctioned his gold medal for a children’s charity in 1996. A buyer purchased the gold medal for US$1 Million —then immediately returned the medal out of respect to Klitschko and his family.
McDonalds lost a bucket load of money as a result of medals.
In 1984, McDonald's ran a campaign that gave customers a chance to win a free Big Mac every time the U.S. won a gold medal. The U.S. won a shocking (for McDonalds, but great for Team USA) 83 gold medals, costing McDonald's millions of dollars in lost profits.
Once, medals were actual money.
After Australia removed their one-cent and two-cent coins from circulation in 1992, thousands were melted to make bronze medals for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. They USA - these are brilliant uses for your spare U.S. pennies for the Los Angeles Games in 2028!
Do you know that a meteorite was used in the Sochi medals? Ten gold medals in the 2014 Sochi Games contained pieces of the massive meteor that exploded over Russia in February, 2013.
Quantity as well as quality.
No nation even vaguely approaches Team U.S.A.'s combined 2,681 summer and winter Olympic medals. Though it hasn’t existed for 25 years, the Soviet Union still comes in second place with 1,204 medals. Great Britain, in third, has 806. Team GB is, however, the only team to have won at least one gold medal at every single Summer Games since the modern Olympics began in 1896.
Ireland’s first medal was rather unique.
Jack Butler Yeats—brother of poet W.B. Yeats—won a silver medal for his oil canvas, The Liffy Swim, in 1924. He was vanquished by a Luxembourgian artist who submitted two paintings of rugby, which hardly seems fair.
Art was an Olympic category for decades.
Five art categories—painting, literature, music, sculpture, and architecture —were introduced in the 1912 Olympics as the “Pentathlon of the Muses,” and remained official events until 1948. Other arty pursuits that could once earn you an Olympic medal: town planning, epic poetry, statues, watercolors, chamber music, and plaques.
Before medals, winners were rewarded with art work.
In the first modern Olympiad, held in 1894, there were no gold medals at all: First place athletes received silver medals, while second place received copper (third place got bubkes). Later, in the 1900 Paris Games, winners received valuable paintings and works of art rather than gold medals.
The hidden meaning behind the gold, silver and bronze medals.
Gold, silver, and bronze medals represent three of the five Ages of Man in Greek mythology. The Golden Age was a time when man and gods lived in harmony. The Silver Age saw man stray from piety, and the Bronze Age marks a period of war and violence. Supposedly we’re in the Iron Age now, but that’s all Greek to me.
For 76 years there was a huge error on the Olympic Medals.
Beginning in 1928, the front of every gold, silver, and bronze medal showed an image of the Roman Colosseum, despite the Olympic games’ Greek roots. This blunder was finally called to attention in 2004, when it was replaced with Athens' Panathenaic Stadium.
Some noise around the Paralympic medals.
Since Rio, tiny steel balls inside gold, silver, and bronze medals will allow visually impaired athletes to identify the ranking by shaking them and listening to the noise.
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