Misinfomation - Where is the Truth?

We haven't had a post about an ancient game in a while, and I thought I'd fix that.  But I'm going to mix it up a little and talk about a game that people have brought back from history and are playing again - yes, that's right, the Olympics.

The first Olympic revival game organized by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) was set in Athens in 1896.  The iconic symbol Olympic rings were designed by Pierre de Coubertin between 1912 and 1913.  I find it a little weird that different sources have conflicting dates on when the design was created.  And I can't trace each claim to its original source because none of the articles listed their sources.  Hence why there is so much misinformation floating around the world...  Along this line, when I was doing research on the Olympic rings, I stumbled across a funny story.

In 1936, the Olympics were held in Germany.  The president of the organizing committee for that year's Olympics (Carl Diem) had the interlocked rings carved on a stone block and placed at Delphi as a prop in the torchbearer's ceremony.  The stone was never removed, and years later, authors Lynn and Gray Poole observed the prop and published  that the rings were a symbol from Ancient Greece.  Again, there was a conflict of information on the origin of the authors.  I read sources that said they were American and others that said they were British.  In doing some research, I found an obituary for Gray Poole that placed her as an American.  I could only find a Wikipedia article on Lynn Poole that placed him as an American as well.  However, I don't know how reliable Wikipedia is in this case, since their article on the Olympic rings claim that the Pooles were British.

See?  The word "Olympic" is included in the title.

The Pooles were said to publish the error in a book called The History of the Ancient Olympic Games.  Most articles that cited the book left out the word "Olympic."  Leaving out even one word of a book title makes the book different.  I have to wonder if any of those authors even bothered to look up the book.  They would have immediately noticed their error.

In trying to learn about this one aspect of the Olympic Games, I had nine browser tabs open to do additional research.  It was difficult to locate reliable sites and even more difficult to trace where different authors got their information.  The spread of misinformation must stem from people not thoroughly researching the topic and not listing their sources.  So then, how sure can anyone be of the information they get?  If nonfiction writers like the Pooles were fooled by the Delphi rings and published their finding in a book, their readers were misinformed and the misinformation could spread by word-of-mouth.  The bottom line: question everything.

Sources:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-08-29/news/0508290043_1_poole-mrs-kensington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Poole
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/08/the-origin-of-the-olympic-rings/
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/olympics/games.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/qi/9472902/QI-Quite-interesting-facts-about-the-Olympics.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_symbols#cite_note-aldaver-3
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-boris-and-the-olympic-rings-of-truth/10825
http://ethicalnag.org/2012/07/20/more-myths-of-olympic-games/
http://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-Olympic-Games-Poole/dp/B005U8M6TK