Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Olympic Cities Destination Quiz (4 of 6)- Amsterdam to St. Louis

If one takes the quiz on the online version of "Mental Floss" asking which cities have hosted the Olympics, there is a  distinct possibility that Amsterdam, which hosted the games in 1928, and St. Louis, which hosted the Olympics in 1904, might be the ones which one might well forget.

The 1904 St. Louis Olympics were only the third Olympics; the first two were held in Athens, Greece, and Paris, France, respectively. Those games are perhaps best remembered for the story of Cuban marathon runner/postal carrier Andarin Caruajal (1875-1949) who begged on the streets to raise funds to travel to Missouri. He ended up finishing fourth!

The Netherlands hosted the games 24 years later with 46 countries participating, which was up considerably from the mere 12 countries who competed in St. Louis. Among the notable events of those games was American swimmer Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984), who was later cinema's Tarzan, winning two gold medals in men's swimming. The 1928 Amsterdam Olympics were also the first ones sponsored by Cocal Cola.

In case you were wondering, that is a map of St. Louis (there were way too many photos of the Arch to choose from) above. The below image is of KLM, the main airline for The Netherlands/Holland.

So, we are asking just how far these two destinations are from each other, my apologies to folks in Turku, Finland, who use the Metric system, but we are going with miles here; is the answer?:

A) 4,374 miles

B) 4,474 miles

C) 4,574 miles

D) 4, 774 miles

http://www.klm.com

http://www.holland.com

www.rnw.nl

http://www.explorestlouis.com

http://www.mentalfloss.com

UPDATE: Since it has been more than 24 hours since we posted this, we'll go ahead and tell you the answer; it is A) 4,374 miles.

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