Although it is impossible to say when man first plunged headfirst into water -- some suggestions date back at least to the time of Greece's ancient Games -- the British were the first to take the sport of diving seriously, diving into ponds.
The only dive then was what is now known as the forward dive straight. The sport took a more artistic side in the early 1800s, when Swedish and German gymnasts took their acrobatics to the beach to practice their jumps and twists over the water.
Diving was one of the two introductory events at the 1904 Games in St. Louis. Springboard diving joined the original platform event four years later and women first competed in the event in 1912 at Stockholm with their own platform event, and women's springboard followed in 1920.
By then up until the early 1990s, the United States took over Sweden and Germany's reign as the diving powerhouse -- totaling 46 of 75 Olympic gold medals -- before China emerged as a threat.
The Sydney Games will mark the beginning of a new chapter in diving with synchronized diving making its Olympic debut.