Greece, home to the very first Olympiad, has never won a Winter Olympics medal.
Countries typically enter the arena in alphabetical order based on the language of the host country; in Beijing, countries were ordered by the number of strokes in the first character of their Mandarin Chinese names, from lowest to highest.
Several countries sent just one (mighty!) athlete to this year's Games: Albania, Eritrea, Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan, Malta, Morocco, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan, Timor-Leste, India, Nigeria, American Samoa, Uzbekistan, Virgin Islands, Peru, Haiti, Cyprus, Philippines and Ghana. Almost all of those single athletes are competing in Alpine skiing.
The U.S. delegation was the second-largest ever for the country at the Winter Games: 224 athletes representing 31 states.
German speedskater Claudia Pechstein is making history: she turns 50 just days after the Games end, making her the oldest woman to compete at a Winter Olympics. She's also just the second athlete to compete in eight Winter Olympics.
Ecuador has its first female Winter Olympian this year. Alpine skier Sarah Escobar (holding the flag), 20, was actually born in the U.S., but decided to compete for Ecuador — her parents' home nation — several years ago.
After the story of the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team took the world by storm (and inspired the 1993 film Cool Runnings), Jamaica will be competing in the four-man bobsled race again for the first time in decades. Jamaica also had an Alpine skier, Benjamin Alexander, qualify for the Winter Games for the first time in history.
Despite their moniker perhaps suggesting otherwise, Iceland has never won an Olympic medal on the ice!
Hailey Kops, 19, is the first Orthodox Jewish woman to compete for Team Israel at the Winter Olympics.
Liechtenstein is the smallest country, by population (just more than 38,000!), to compete in this year's Games.
