Mondo Knows Facts

The Olympic rings stand for five continents

Pierre de Coubertin introduced the symbol in 1913

The five interlocking rings were introduced by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement, in 1913, and first flew at the 1920 Antwerp Games. They represent the five inhabited continents joined together. The rings and white background contain the colours of every national flag of that time.

Olympic Rings Portland
Kmtextor ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

Olympics.com

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

Go further

More facts like this

Tags: olympics, symbol, history

The Olympic rings stand for five continents: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Pierre de Coubertin introduced the symbol in 1913. The figure is taken from Olympics.com, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a sports fact?
Yes. It sits on the Sports shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.