For roughly a millennium in ancient Greece, pan-Hellenic athletic competitions were held in Olympia every four years. With an eye to resurrecting the Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was formed in the late nineteenth century and the first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896. Since then the Olympics have taken place at regular four-year intervals, with time out for a couple of world wars. In the mid-twentieth century, winter competitions for cold-weather sports were added, first as an adjunct to the long-standing warm-weather competition and then as a separate event held in a different city and on a different quadrennial cycle from the Summer Games.