Paris 1924.

The 1924 Olympics earned its place in cinematic history (and immortalised Vangelis) through the 1981 film 'Chariots of Fire'... The film told the story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams. Liddell was well known as the fastest man in Scotland and for his devout Christianity. He was forced to withdraw from the 100m after refusing to run a heat on a Sunday and set his sights on the 400 instead. When the day of the Olympic 400 metres race came an American team masseur slipped a piece of paper into his hand with a quotation from the book of Samuel: "Those who honor me I will honor."

The pipe band of the 51st Highland Brigade played outside the stadium before the race and inspired by the biblical message and the pipe music, Liddell scorched the first 200 metres to be well clear of the favoured Americans. He was challenged all the way but held on to take the win, breaking the existing world record with a time of 47.6 seconds.

Abrahams won the 100 m in a time of 10.6 seconds. In third place was Arthur Porritt. The race took place at 7pm on 7th July and Abrahams and Porritt dined together at 7pm on 7th July every year thereafter.

Jonny Weissmuller, better known for his role in the Tarzan movies, made his first Olympic appearance, taking 3 medals in swimming and one in water polo.

The Paris Olympics is reported to have lost a smidge over 450,000 francs, well worth it for the spectacle of Nigel Havers in his shorts.

Celebrity profile - Baron Pierre De Coubertin.

Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, here immortalised on a stamp from Azerbaijan, had the Olympics running through his very veins. The idea of the Olympics came to him in 1889 and he spent the next 5 years bringing it together, involving himself in every level from meeting international luminaries to sketching up the velodrome to trying to find more than one football team.

He was the founding member of the International Olympic committee.

Coubertin came up with the idea of an Olympic oath, as far back as 1906.

He won the gold medal for literature at the 1912 Summer Olympics for his poem 'Ode to Sport'.

He created the Olympic flag in 1914.

'Its not the winning but the taking part' was one of his many catchy quotes... Famous for his unflinching belief that the Olympics were a force for peace and harmony, he later wrote,

"Peace…could be the product only of a better world; a better world could be brought about only by better individuals; and better individuals could be developed only by the give and take, the buffeting and battering, the stress and strain of fierce competition."

The Pierre de Coubertin medal (also known as the Coubertin medal or the True Spirit of Sportsmanship medal) is an award given by the International Olympic Committee to those athletes that demonstrate sportsmanship in the Olympic Games. It is considered by many to be the highest award that an Olympic athlete can receive.

Opening ceremonies, parades, fireworks and hugely inflated infrastructure costs are all part of the Baron's legacy.

Celebrity profile - Hal Haig Prieste - 1920

The iconic Olympic flag, with its 5 interlocking rings representing the 5 continents, made its debut at the games of 1920. The very first Olympic flag was presented to the IOC by the city of Antwerp but at the end of the Games it could not be found and a new one had to be made. The replacement was still known as the "Antwerp Flag" and was used at every Summer Olympics until 1988.

In 1997, at a banquet hosted by the US Olympic Committee, a reporter was interviewing Hal Haig Prieste, then the worlds oldest surviving olympian (he took bronze in platform diving as a member of the 1920 US team). The reporter mentioned the disappearing flag. "I can help you with that," Prieste said, "It's in my suitcase." At the end of the Antwerp Olympics he had climbed a flagpole, stolen the flag and kept it in his suitcase for 77 years. The flag was returned to the IOC by Prieste, by then 103 years old, in a special ceremony held at the 2000 Games in Sydney.

Antwerp 1920.

By the 1920 games the Olympic capacity for nonsense had been dulled by war. This was a games of new states and sanctions. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey were banished from the games for losing the first world war and the (vastly expensive and inevitably loss making) games were granted to Belgium as if to compensate them through sport for being thoroughly trampled and shot at.

Argentina, Finland, The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Brazil and Monaco competed as nations for the first time. New Zealand, which had competed as part of a combined team with Australia in 1908 and 1912, competed on its own for the first time. Estonia entered, having just won the Estonian war of independence, and its athletes dominated the lighter categories of men's weightlifting.

Oscar Swahn of Sweden (pictured), having taken 2 golds in 1908 and another in 1912, took his third and final running deer double shot medal. Even though this time it was a bronze he set a record unbeaten to this day in the process, smashing his own record by 8 years and once again becoming the oldest medal winner in Olympic history, this time at the ripe old age of 72.

1920 was the first year in which the gold medals were not actually made of gold.

The local organising committee went bankrupt so no official report of the games or medals tables were ever produced.

Stockholm 1912.

We enter our quickfire rundown of the last 100 years of Olympic History in Sweden, the first world war is looming and the Olympics as we know it is finding its feet. Here are the facts.

Electric timing devices were introduced.

This was the only Olympics to feature duelling. This required competitors to shoot at manniquins dressed in frock coats with a Bull's eye on the dummy's throat. The event was held over 20 meters and 30 meters.

Sweden, as the host country, refused to hold boxing events but introduced art and sculpture as Olympic disciplines.

Portuguese Francisco Lázaro died from a heart attack while running the marathon, the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympics to die during competition.

A Greco-Roman Wrestling bout between Martin Klein and Alfred Asikainen lasted 11 hours and forty minutes - the world's longest wrestling match. After Klein finally took the victory, he was too tired to compete in the final so Johansson, the other wrestler to make the final three, became the gold medalist.

American Jim Thorpe won the pentathlon and the decathlon but was disqualified because of violation of the rules of amateurism (having played, and been paid for, 2 seasons of semi professional baseball). The IOC decided in 1982 to posthumously reinstate Thorpe's name as the true winner and to present his heirs with duplicate medals.

Celebrity Profile - Shizo Kanakuri.

Kanakuri is celebrated as the father of the Marathon in Japan despite holding an unchallenged world record for the slowest ever recorded time.

At the V Olympics in Sweden Kanakuri disappeared during the marathon. He lost consciousness due to the heat and was cared for by a farming family before returning to Japan without notifying race officials. The authorities considered him missing for 50 years. In 1966 he was contacted by Swedish Television and offered to complete his run.

He set a time of 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes and 20.379 seconds.

London 1908.

As we enter the year of London 2012 we would like to present our hand picked 104th anniversary commemorative trivia collection from the first London Olympics, 1908.

The most famous incident of the games came at the end of the marathon. The first to enter the stadium, Dorando Pietri of Italy, collapsed several times and ran the wrong way. Not far from the finish, two officials took him by the arms and brought him to the line. As a consequence, after crossing the line he was disqualified and the medal went to American Johnny Hayes. The glory however went to Pietri and since he had not been responsible for his disqualification, Queen Alexandra next day awarded him a gilded silver cup.

Motorboating featured at London 1908, held a month late to better fit the diaries of the affluent participants. The Duke of Westminster ran aground in his boat Wolseley-Siddeley and Lord Howard's boat Daimler II developed engine trouble. The victory was therefore handed to the only other competitor, France's M Thubron in Camille and the sport was never included in the Olympics again.

For the first time the Olympic creed that "the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part" was uttered.

Oscar Swahn from Sweden, who won the gold medal for running deer shooting, became the oldest Olympic champion of all time.

Over one third of the budget of the organizing committee was labeled "entertainment expense".