OLYMPIC TORCH

When did they first start the olympic torch?

1928 summer olympics in Amsterdam

Why do they have an olympic Torch?

The Olympic flame is a symbol of the Olympic Games. Commemorating the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus, its origins lie in ancient Greece, where a fire was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics.

What happens with the Olympic Torch?

The Olympic flame was lit by a concave mirror in Olympia, Greece and transported over 3,187 kilometres by 3,331 runners in twelve days and eleven nights from Greece to Berlin. Leni Riefenstahl later staged the torch relay for the 1938 film Olympia.

How long does the torch take to get to Rio?

Follow the Olympic Torch Relay to Rio! Over 12000 torchbearers will carry the Olympic flame through 329 Brazilian cities between May 3-Aug 5, 2016.

Find 5 interesting facts about the Olympic torch

The ancient Greeks believed that fire was given to humankind by Prometheus, and considered fire to have sacred qualities. Mirrors were used to focus the sun's rays to ignite flames that would burn perpetually in front of Greek temples. Greek rituals also included torch relays, although this was not actually part of the Olympic Games.

Today, the Olympic flame is lit in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece. The flame emphasizes the connection between the ancient games and the modern ones. In the past, a high priestess of the Temple of Hera would light the flame using a skaphia, the ancestor of parabolic mirrors.

The modern use of the Olympic Flame began in 1936. It coincided with the advent of a long relay of runners carrying torches to bring the flame from Olympia to the site of the games. Once there, the torch is used to light a cauldron that remains lit until it is extinguished in the Closing Ceremony.

The first such relay took place for the 1936 Berlin Games. Some 3,330 runners brought the flame through Greece,Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Similar relays have taken place for every Summer Game since.

The 2004 relay was the first to start and end in Greece; it was also the first to visit every continent, crossing 34 cities in 27 countries before returning to Greece. The flame travels by plane between cities, and is relayed by foot within cities.

Being a torch-bearer is considered an honor, one given to local residents with a record of community service, in addition to athletes and celebrities.

The torches generally burn a gas fuel, and are specially designed to resist the effects of wind and rain.

The Olympic torch relay began in 1936 at the Berlin Games. Carl Diem, the secretary general of the Organizing Committee of the Games of the XI Olympiad in Berlin, proposed using a torch relay to bring the flame from Olympia to the games in Germany. Modern historians have speculated that Adolf Hitler, then chancellor of Germany who believed in the supremacy of the Aryan race, pushed for the torch relay to symbolically link the Berlin games with the rituals and gods of Ancient Greece.

Critics state that the Olympic torch relay survives solely due to the support of commercial interests, rather than in the spirit of the original goals of the games: to promote greater contact and interchange between countries and athletes.

In class for reading we have been doing reading on the Olympic torch here is some of my work