When the Olympics roll around, it's an amazing treat. Unlike most sports worldwide that feature a new season each year, we only get to see the best of the best athletes on the Olympic stage a handful of times in our life. It's no wonder the games are so wildly popular around the globe, with about five billion people tuning in to the most recent 2024 summer games in Paris.

The history of the Olympic games goes all the way back to ancient Greece, with the first official games being held sometime in the 8th century BC and the final event occurring in the 4th century AD. The competition took place in Olympia, Greece and consisted of sports like wrestling and horse racing.

After a 1500 year draught, the Olympic Games were revived in 1896 and held in Athens. Stunningly, someone brought along a video camera.

In 2016, the British Film Institute published a 37-second clip that purports to show footage from the very first modern Olympic Games. What's absolutely staggering about the video clip from 1896 is that what's widely considered to be the oldest preserved "moving picture" is from just eight years earlier: a short, two-second clip called the "Roundhay Garden Scene" that showed four people gleefully walking around a garden.

For reference, the modern film camera had just been invented in 1888 by George Eastman. The Kodak camera was the first "You press the button, we do the rest," camera in the world. When the 1896 Olympics were held, even still photography was just beginning to catch on with the masses.

Here are a few other notable facts that put the age of this footage into greater context:

Simply put, there is not much existing video footage from this time period in the world, so it's truly amazing to behold even these short clips from the very first modern Olympic Games.

(BFI states that it's possible some of the footage may be from the 1906 Intercalated Games.)

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A few things stand out from the near-ancient footage.

First, we see an opening ceremony held at the Panathenaic Stadium. Other footage reportedly taken at the time shows a crowd gathering, including royal figures like George I, the King of Greece at the time, and British king Edward VII.

Athletes then take place in a standing high jump event. Again, some of the footage may be from the 1906 games, but according to the Olympic committee, the high jump was performed at the 1896 event. The United States swept the podium.

The lack of fanfare at the time is noticeable. As athletes step up to the jumping bar, a handful of men in suits loaf around and write things down in notebooks. There's no high-tech instant replay or television production. Just regular, athletic people who came from thousands of miles away to do their very best.

The opening ceremony in Athens, Greece during the 1896 OlympicsBy Unknown author/Public Domain

Over 200 athletes from 14 different countries gathered to take place in the first Olympic Games. The event was monumentally important for the future of organized athletics. Here are a few notable happenings from the groundbreaking event:

The marathon, a 26.2 mile race that's become a running staple today, was invented for the 1896 games. It was dreamt up to honor the "legend of Pheidippides, who is said to have run 40 km from Marathon to Athens in around 490 BC," according to Olympic history.

Swimming events were held in the open waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Funnily enough, in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, open-water swimming was reintroduced as a standalone event.

Gold medals for first place winners had not been invented yet. Champions received a silver medal and an olive branch, while runners-up received bronze. The gold medal didn't come around until the 1904 Games, although winners were later posthumously awarded Gold medals from the committee.

Long before age-limits and strict committee requirements, a 10-year-old boy named Dimitrios Loundras of Greece competed in gymnastics during the 1896 Olympics. He performed well in the parallel bars and his team placed third. To this day, he is the youngest competitor and medalist in Olympic history.

An Olympic medal from 1896.By Unknown author/Public Domain

The Olympics have become a mass spectacle, chock full of sponsorships, commercials, and world-class professional athletes. But they were initially created to celebrate cultural exchange and peaceful cooperation between nations.

There's even a myth that all countries who participated in the ancient Games would suspend wars and conflicts until after the Olympics were over. That's not strictly true, but it speaks to the spirit of the games and what they mean both to people who compete in them and watch them.

That's still why we love watching. The athletic feats are incredible, but it's the parade of nations, human stories, and learning about the culture of the host country that keeps us tuning in every two-four years. We're extremely fortunate to have video evidence of where it all began over 100 years ago.

Nearly every parent hopes their child will be better off than they are: smarter, more secure, and more well-adjusted. Many parents see this as a stamp of successful parenting, but something has changed for children growing up today. While younger generations are known for their empathy, their cognitive capabilities seem to be lagging behind those of previous generations for the first time in history.

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a teacher turned cognitive neuroscientist who focuses on human learning, appeared before Congress to discuss concerns about cognitive development in children. In his address to the members of Congress, he says, "A sad fact that our generation has to face is this: our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. Since we've been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents, and that's exactly what we want. We want sharper kids."

Student smiling in a classroom, working on a laptop.Photo credit: Canva

Horvath explains that the reason this happens is that each generation has gone to school longer than the previous generation. Gen Z is no exception to the longer duration of time spent in school, but they're the first ones who aren't meeting this normal increase in cognitive development. According to the cognitive neuroscientist, the decline is due to the introduction of screens in the classroom, which started around 2010.

"Across 80 countries, as Jean was just saying, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly. To the point where kids who use computers about five hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over two-thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school," Horvath reveals.

In most cases, the decline in performance doesn't result in better strategies. The neuroscientist shares that the standardized testing has been adjusted to accommodate lower expectations and shorter attention spans. This is an approach that educators, scientists, and researchers went to Capitol Hill to express wasn't working. But not every country is taking the approach of lowering standards to meet lowered cognitive ability. Denmark went in the opposite direction when it realized their students were slipping behind.

France24 recently interviewed educators in Denmark following their seemingly novel approach to students struggling with cognitive development. Since the beginning of the 2025/2026 school year, Denmark has not only been having students turn in........

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