Before the start of the athletic competitions all participants would come together to offer sacrifices to the gods and ask for their support. Then the events would kick off, the participants usually competing in the nude. These were the Olympic games around the fourth century A.D., when Christian Emperor Theodosius the Great put an end to the pagan rituals. There would be no more Olympics for a millenia and a half, until nostalgic voices in Athens, the traditional center of the games, began to call for a revival.

On this day, November 15, in 1859, Athens held the first Olympic games since the time of Theodosius. Theirs was still a small, local event — far from the international spectacle the Olympics would become.

Evangelos Zappas, a Greek philanthropist, is widely credited with organizing the first games. He was inspired by the Greek poet and newspaper editor, Panagiotis Soutsos, who called a revival of the games. Zappas volunteered to the Greek king to bankroll the entire event, and the king readily accepted. Those games would inspire similar events in Britain and Paris, which inspired the organization of the first truly international Olympics that would come by the 1890s.