London 2012

    In all the excitement regarding the Olympic Games, I found it appropriate to say one or two extra things about London 2012...
    London won the bid for the host city of the Olympic Games, beating Moscow, New York, Madrid and Paris. London is the only city in the world to have hosted the Olympics 3 times (first in 1908, then in 1948, and, finally, now). Bids for the 2012 Olympics began in 2003 and, 2 years later, Paris and London were seen as the cities with the best chances. London won-but narrowly, with only 4 votes more than Paris. A number of improvements had to be carried out in London, to ensure that no incidents would take place while the Olympics started (including a new high-speed railway system called "Javelin"). The UK currently has over 300 contestants in the Olympics, being one of the few countries to have such an amount of people participating. In 2008, the Mayor of Beijing handed the Olympic flag to the Mayor of London, who will, in turn, hand it over to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the host of the 2016 Olympics. Once again, good luck to everybody!