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The article discusses the history and organization of the modern Olympic Games. It begins with the founding of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1894, with the goal of promoting international peace and understanding through athletic competition. The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece in 1896, and since then, the Summer Olympics have been held every four years, with exceptions during World Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic. The article also highlights the inclusion of women in the Olympics over time and the establishment of separate Winter Olympics starting in 1924. It mentions the process of selecting host cities and the evaluation of sports for inclusion in the Olympic program. The article concludes with a list of the 32 sports that will be represented at the 2024 Paris Olympics. [Extracted from the article]

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat and teacher, believed that physical education and activity were important for a person's overall well being. For years, he had tried to find [...]

It was May of 1765, and a Scottish engineer named James Watt was thinking long and hard about a problem. An instrument maker, Watt had been asked by a professor [...]

CHANGE, REGARDLESS Of HOW MINOR, CAN REVOLUTIONIZE EVEN A SIMPLE TASK. FOR EXAMPLES OF HOW THIS APPLIES TO ARCHITECTURE, READ ON IRON AND STEEL Iron and steel--that is, a combination [...]

KIM JONG UN In 1910, Imperial Japan annexed the independent kingdom of Korea. Just a few decades later, following Japan's defeat in World War II, the Korean peninsula was split [...]

'We did it!' was the shout heard from Titusville, Pennsylvania, in August 1859. It was a momentous occasion--an oil well had struck block gold for the first time. The previous [...]

It is no coincidence that the Roman world included one of the most fertile areas on the planet. The climate and geography made the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea incredibly [...]

The word 'raptor' would never have become a common everyday term had it not been for Michael Crichton. The Chicago native began writing crime thrillers while in medical school. After [...]

I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it is forward. --David Livingstone 'Where do you think Livingstone is?' thundered Bennett. 'I really do not know, sir,' replied Stanley. 'Do you [...]

According to one archaeologist, the third millennium B.C. in England was the "Age of Stonehenge." That archaeologist, Timothy Darvill, a professor at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom, says that […]

The nearly complete skeleton of a dwarf species of mammoth was uncovered off the Californian coast in 1994. For years, scientists had found remains of a kind of dwarf mammoth [...]

Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City, by Michael A. Lerner, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 351 pages, $28.95 The Diary of a Rum-Runner, by Alastair Moray, Mystic: Flat Hammock Press, [...]

Underwater archaeologists, just like so many people, take a laptop computer with them when they go to work. But, instead of heading to an office by car or train, these […]

In 1894, a French aristocrat and teacher by the name of Baron de Coubertin founded the International Olymlic Committee (IOC). De Coubertin believed that athletics were an important part of […]

Today, there's more to the world than just pyramids and hanging gardens. Here are CALLIOPE's picks for the most amazing wonders, both on and off the planet, all built after [...]

The ancient Romans' regard for cleanliness, combined with their technical ingenuity, developed into one of the hallmarks of their civilization: the Roman baths. Every town and city had at least […]

While Aristotle is best known today for his teachings about ethics, logic, and physics, approximately a third of his writings involved biology and the study of animals. After moving to [...]

In architecture, shape and design are inseparable. Yet, when most people think of structures, they often focus much more on the design than on the shapes that created the design. [...]

You have heard of Olympic sports such as archery, shot put, and the 400 meters. Even badminton is an Olympic game. So why are baseball, karate, and several other popular [...]

Water will always flow from a higher point to a lower point. Drawn by gravity, it will flow downward until it reaches the ocean. There, it evaporates into the air, [...]

On the evening of June 9, 1727, the Dutch ship Zeewijk was sailing about 40 miles off the coast of western Australia. The ship was on its maiden voyage, bound [...]

On the southern coast of Peru, sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains, lies a series of desert plateaus known as pampas. This stony desert, blanketed by red-brown [...]

About 7,700 years ago, a deer stepped between the sparse birch trees of the eastern Ural Mountains. It stood more than six feet tall at the shoulder, as big as […]

It wasn't easy being a Neandertal, especially when you consider that every adult Neandertal skeleton ever recovered has at least one broken bone or head injury. While numerous Neandertal skeletons […]

Today, L'Anse aux Meadows is a marshy field of bog and windswept grass located on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, Canada. Ice floes dot the water well into June. Nearby [...]

When Alex Haggis asks his classmates what they did on their summer vacation, many of them say they spent it sitting inside, avoiding the North Carolina heat. Heat is no [...]

In the dwindling years of the 15th century, Europeans had only a vague understanding of where coveted spices such as pepper and cinnamon originated. At the time, Muslims controlled the […]

THE SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL Festival of Arts and Ideas, held last June in New Haven, Connecticut, was one of those upscale boho fairs filled with puppets and Andean pan pipes aimed [...]

Little did the citizens of Leptis Magna (SEE ALSO PAGES 24-26) realize that 48 B.C. would prove a fateful year for their city. At the time, a civil war was [...]

By 1898, Marie Curie was a published author who had two university degrees, a husband, and a baby daughter. She was determined to continue her education and acquire a Ph.D., [...]

The telephones at the Lawnmoor Street police station in Glasgow, Scotland, would not stop ringing. It was a Thursday evening in September 1954. Dozens of people were phoning the police [...]

--John Ruskin, English art critic and social thinker (1819-1900) Like your denim jeans? Couldn't live without them? If you answered 'yes' to both questions, then you are just one of [...]

A cemetery recently discovered in Turkey has revealed the remains of Roman gladiators--some of whom died battling in the arena. Archaeologists, working in a graveyard in what was once the [...]

Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura was at the peak of his career in 2000 when he and his team announced they had discovered postholes from Paleolithic structures at the site of [...]

A privateer is a pirate who has been given permission by a government to do what pirates do best: attack ships and steal their cargo. The only difference between a [...]

Indiana Jones is a fictional action hero, not a real-life archaeologist. He often does not practice good archaeology. But let's face it: If he did, watching him painstakingly brush dirt [...]

48 B.C. proved a fateful year for Leptis Magna. It was during that year that its citizens welcomed the Roman statesmen Cato the Younger into their city. At the time, [...]

Who were the imiazen, or 'noble ones'? That is what the ancient indigenous people of coastal North Africa called themselves. We know them today as the Berbers. The word 'Berber' [...]

In the deserts of northwestern Venezuela, paleontologists have uncovered the fossil remains of a rodent as large as a cow. Weighing more than three-quarters of a ton (1,545 pounds) and […]

The Dogon, the 'people of the cliffs,' live in the African country of Mali along a mountainous spine of rock known as the Bandiagara Cliffs. This area lies in a […]

Cahokia was an urban center situated at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers that rose to prominence around A.D. 1100. It was built within a floodplain of […]

If you dropped a handful of gold coins, you'd scramble to pick them up, right? When a group of Mayan traders showed a handful of cacao beans to Christopher Columbus, [...]

Who would know better about the conflict between Greece and Persia than a Greek who went to war in Persia and lived to write about it? Such a person was […]

A tomb uncovered in July 2005 in southeast Bulgaria has revealed the lavish apparel of a young Thracian king. The tomb, which dates to around 365 B.C., is located near […]

In 1505, the viceroy (governor) of Portugal's enterprises in Africa and Asia sent his son Lorenzo de Almeida to capture the Maldives. These are a chain of islands southwest of [...]

Never heard of the state of Franklin? Its existence was brief, from 1784 to about 1788, though as with such still-existing post-Revolution states as Maine and Vermont, self-rule had been [...]

When we think of Egypt today, we usually picture a desert. But that's not how the Romans and Greeks imagined it--they saw Egypt as a lush garden. Both the Greeks […]

THE LATE CRETACEOUS TWO-LEGGED dinosaur Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis is easily recognized by its domed forehead surrounded by short spikes. This part of the skull--called the frontoparietal dome--originally was believed to have [...]