This February, the 21st Winter Olympics will be held from the 12th to the 28th in Vancouver, British Columbia. Olympic athletes from over 80 countries will participate. The Olympic Games are expected to cost an estimated $1.76 billion; of this total, the security budget for the events will be approximately $900 million. The event will be officially opened by Canadian Governor General Michaelle Jean. Here are some other interesting facts about the Winter Olympics:

• The first Winter Olympic Games were held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. This began the tradition of holding the Winter Games several months earlier and in a different city than the Summer Olympic Games.
• Beginning in 1994, the Winter Olympic Games were held two years apart from the Summer Olympics.
• The United States has hosted the Winter Olympics four times; 1932 and 1980 in Lake Placid, NY; 1960 in Squaw Valley, CA; and 2000 in Salt Lake City, UT.
• In 2014, the 22nd Winter Olympic Games will be held in Sochi, Russia.
• No country in the Southern Hemisphere has ever hosted a Winter Games.
• Four athletes have won medals at both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games: Eddie Eagan (United States), Jacob Tullin Thams (Norway), Christa Luding-Rothenburger (East Germany), and Clara Hughes (Canada).
• Cross-country skier Bjorn Dählie of Norway has won the most medals (12) at the Winter Olympic Games.
• Speed skater Bonnie Blair has won the most medals (6) for an American athlete.
• Norway has won more gold medals at the Winter Games than any other country.
• The first electric timing devices and public address systems were used at the Winter Olympics In 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden. The 1980 games in Lake Placid, NY, were the first to use artificial snow.
• Four Winter Olympic sports are held indoors: curling, hockey, figure skating, and speed skating. Ice hockey actually made its Olympic debut at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
• The oldest man to receive a Winter Olympics medal is 83-year-old Anders Haugen. The Norwegian-American actually received his ski-jump bronze medal 50 years after he competed in 1924 when a scoring error was discovered in 1974.
• The Shea family of Lake Placid, NY, is the first with three generations of Olympians. Father Jack Shea was a double-gold medalist in speed skating; his son Jim, Sr., was a U.S. ski team member at the 1964 games in Innsbruck, Austria; and grandson Jim, Jr., won a gold medal in skeleton in 2000.