Summer Olympic Games from a 42-event competition with fewer than 250 male competitors from 14 nations in 1896, to 306 events with 11,238 competitors (6,179 men, 5,059 women) from 206 nations in 2016. The Summer Olympics has been hosted on five continents by a total of nineteen countries. The United States has hosted the Games four times (in 1904, 1932, 1984 and 1996); this is more times than any other nation. The Games have been held three times in the United Kingdom (in 1908, 1948 and 2012); twice each in Greece (1896, 2004), France (1900, 1924), Germany (1936, 1972) and Australia (1956, 2000);
Paris in the Belle Époque Olympic Committee and the holding of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. The second games, the first Olympics held outside of Greece, were the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, from 14 May until 28 October 1900, organized in conjunction with the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. There were 19 sports included in the event, and women competed in the Olympics for the first time. The swimming events took place in the Seine. Some of the sports were unusual by modern standards; they included automobile and motorcycle racing, cricket, croquet, underwater swimming, tug-of-war, and shooting live pigeons. Cycling