The 1896SummerOlympics, officially known as the '''Games of the I Olympiad''', were held in 1896 in Athens, Greece.
However, the 1900 SummerOlympics were already planned for Paris and, barring the so-called Intercalated Games of 1906, the Olympics did not return to Greece until the 2004 SummerOlympics.
The true origin of the modern Olympics was acknowledged by De Coubertin as being in Much Wenlock, a rural market town in the English county of Shropshire.
The winter Olympics were begun in 1924 and were held in the same year as the summer games until the 1994 winter games in Lillehammer, Norway, when the alternating cycles began.
The 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, reflected a changed political landscape: the 172 participating nations and territories included the Unified Team (with athletes from 12 former Soviet republics), a reunited Germany, and South Africa, which was allowed to compete for the first time since 1960.
The Olympic games are competitions of individual athletes, not of nations, and the IOC does not keep national scores; however, the media of all nations report national standings according to one of two scoring systems.