People have been flinging orbs past each other for fun since ancient times, but it's long been thought that what's now known as handball originated in Germany in the 1890's. Raffballspiel was a method to help keep gymnasts fit, and the game is said to have developed from there. But recent research indicates that the sport likely came from a more northerly place. The lineage of modern rules seems to point straight back to a haandbold ruleset developed by a Danish multi-sport athlete who competed at the 1896 Athens Games, a man by the name of Holger Nielsen.

It would take Denmark nearly a century to climb to the top of the handball world, and its women's team made that glorious ascent. During the 1970's, when women's handball gained Olympic status, Denmark was registering lackluster performances at the world championships. Then the side vanished from the map for the entirety of the next decade. But in 1994, under the tutelage of head coach Ulrik Wilbek, the Danes broke through with a European Championship -- they were off to the Olympics for the first time.

The United States overwhelmingly ruled Olympic basketball from the initial tournament in 1936 up until the controversial gold-medal loss to the Soviet Union in 1972. But perhaps that was to be expected, seeing as that Americans invented and nurtured the game in its formative years. That can't be said, however, about the Indian field hockey teams that won every single one of their Olympic matches from 1928 until the gold-medal match in 1960. India didn't develop hockey by themselves; they discovered the game before dominating it.

Modern field hockey is generally considered an English product, born and refined at schools during the 19th Century, and passed on to the East by way of the British Empire. According to the Complete Book of the Olympics, India did not play internationally until 1926, but at Amsterdam two years later, the country announced its presence in the previously British-controlled sport in a big way.

That 1928 team (pictured, above) won all five of its matches on its way to gold, scoring 29 goals and giving up none. The victims included the silver and bronze medalists from the previous Olympic tournament in 1920 (there was no event held in 1924), Denmark (5-0) and Belgium (9-0), respectively. Fifteen of the goals were scored by Dhyan Chand, who would go on to become India's Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Cristiano Ronaldo -- all in one person.