Megin Moore, special to wtop.com

WASHINGTON – After more than a century, the Olympics is filled stories of unintentional wins, flukes and quirky sports. Below is a list that covers a little bit of each.

• Winners received paintings instead of gold medals at the 1900 games. This was because, at the time, they were considered more valuable.
• Margaret Abbott unknowingly became the first American to win a gold medal in golf. She thought she was playing just to celebrate the World Fair in France, where her and her mother had visited for vacation.
• In 1932, steeple chasers had to run an extra lap because the official lost count.
• Not all athletes are cutthroat competitors. Henry Pierce from Australia stopped rowing mid-race in the 1928 Amsterdam games to let a family of ducks pass in front of his boat and still won the gold.
• In 1972, Mark Spitz planned to shave off his famous mustache before the first swim, but changed his mind after joking to Russian competitors that it kept the water away from his mouth. He won and, in the next Olympic games, all the Russian swimmers had mustaches.
• Gold medals haven’t been made completely of gold since 1912. They’re made out of silver and only covered in 6 grams of gold.
• The colors of the Olympic rings were picked because every nation’s flag contains one of those colors in it.
• The extra 0.2 miles at the end of a marathon originated at the Olympics. During the 1908 games in London, organizers added another 385 yards to the 26-mile marathon to make sure the royal family could see the finish line.
• Tug-of-war was once an Olympic sport. Featured from 1900 to 1920, the sport was mostly won by the Brits. Even the London police force taking home the gold medal in 1908.

The 2012 London games already has some quirks of its own. The focus this year is the environment, and London has gone to some extensive lengths to make the Games recyclable:

• The Olympic Stadium is the lightest ever built, and has the capacity to hold 80,000 people.
• Four arenas will be dismantled after the games and relocated throughout the U.K., including the water polo and training swimming pools.
• The Olympic Village will be converted into 3,600 apartments after the games.
• McDonald’s will be opening its largest restaurant ever built inside the village, but it will be deconstructed after the games. Most of the furniture and equitment used will be recycled in other restaurants.
• About 4,000 newts, as well as hundreds of toads, were removed by hand from the Olympic park site and relocated during construction.
• The stadium has more than 525 birdhouses, 150 bat houses and several otter holes to continue to maintain the local wildlife.

Other interesting facts about games past and present can be found at 10 Odd Discontinued Olympic Sports by Listserve, 100 Bizarre Facts by The Mirror, 10 Cool Facts About the Olympics That Your Kids Will Love by She Knows.com and 10 Curious Facts About London 2012 by Yahoo.com.

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