21 amazing facts about Beijing Olympics 2008
Wednesday, Aug 27th, 2008 By Amit Bhardwaj
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Two months back no one could have imagined that China can put up a show like this. People around the globe witnessed one of the most unforgettable opening and closing ceremonies. But no one can really think about the technology, money and people involved behind it. So here are some facts that you must know..
Amazing facts..
1. The total cost of Beijing Olympics is around 43 billion USD. The cost of building venues amount to around 1.8 billion USD. After the Games, the venues will be used as public sports and entertainment complexes.
2. Before the Olympics, about 400 million young Chinese pupils in more than 500,000 schools around China took lessons about the Olympics. This was in keeping with one of the primary goals of the Olympic Movement – to educate young people through sports.
3. This was the last time that baseball and softball were played as Olympic sports. The two have been scrapped from the program of the 2012 London Olympics.
4. After 1936 it was the first time that a country other than the United States or the Soviet Union has led the medal count.
5. India has 17% of the world’s population. They won 0.31% of Olympic medals.
6. Pakistan was the most populous country not to win an Olympic medal (164 million residents, sixth-largest nation in the world), whereas Iceland was the least populous country to win an Olympic medal.
7. China: 19.8% of population, 10.4% of medals.
8. United States: 4.6% of population, 11.5% medals.
9. NBColympics.com had 70 million page views on 8/8/08 which was 50 million more than the peak of Athens Olympics.
10. Roughly 4 1 billion people around the world saw the opening ceremony and a total of 4.7 billion watched the olymics.
11. In the closing ceremony about 2,583 special lights were applied. The lighting equipments, weighing over 300 tons, were installed in five months.
12. Around 3500 babies in China have been given the name Aoyun, or “Olympics”, with more Chinese mothers tried to give birth on the day of the opening ceremony, August 8, 2008.
13. For the fourth consecutive Olympics the overall medal count was won by the United States.
14. The most expensive Olympic tickets cost 5,000 yuan (731 USD) for the opening ceremony. The cheapest for a sports competition is 30 yuan (4.38 USD). About 7 million tickets were made available to the public.
Technology Facts
1. About 1000 servers, 5000 results systems terminals, 4000 printers and more than 10000 pcs’ were used. 4000 people were in IT staff to manage it.
2. For the first time, Olympics games has been produced entirely in high-definition (HD)
3. For the first time ever in any Olympic openings, Beijing used a monitoring system to program control of more than 18,000 performers through their identification codes. The control system named “ShenZhou 4000″ used during space missions was used in the control center of the opening ceremony.
4. Weather rockets were shot to halt rain clouds from reaching Bird’s Nest at the night of opening ceremony.
5. The big display at the center of the “NEST” is made possible by an LED screen which measures 147 meters long and 22 meters wide that embedded 44,000 colorful LED beads.
6. Digital ignition control system was used to minimize the time difference of the firework display to a few milliseconds at more than 30 locations across Beijing. 40,000 shots. None of them malfunctioned.
7. This was the first time that the International Olympic Committee has sold separate broadcasting rights for television and new media such as internet and mobile technologies.
Updated: Sep 5, 2008
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25 Responses to “21 amazing facts about Beijing Olympics 2008”
Olympic games updates » Blog Archive » 21 amazing facts about Beijing Olympics 2008 on August 27th, 2008
[...] Original post by Technotraits.com [...]
Quite a interesting collection of facts, stumbled.
Thanks, Keith
I find very dry humor out of the fact that out of your entire article, the one typo I came across was in number 6 of the technology section describing how none of the 40,000 malfunctioned… call me goofy but it’s silly to see that “None of htem malfunctioned”
6ish billion people worldwide.
2 billion people cant even afford to eat right.
so thats assuming that every single one of the 4 billion people who had access to a tv watched the opening ceremonies.
ridiculous.
I suspect you’re using some of the official facts according to the Chinese authorities. Some of the fireworks failed during the opening ceremony, and were digitally edited into film later shown around the world.
i agree with b dogg. number 10 under amazing facts is bs. perhaps the writer meant 400 million which would seem more reasonable and accurate.
Amazing fact number 12 is only half amazing. The fact, if true, that so many babies were named AoYun is quite interesting, but the calendar date had more to do with the desire to give birth than the Olympics did. In Chinese culture 8 is an auspicious number, and no date will have this many 8s auspiciously arranged (08/08/08) until 2088. Weddings are also often scheduled for August 8th of each year.
@b dogg,@noah
I have updated number 10,the 4 billion figure was for whole Olympics which was mistakenly given for opening ceremony, but still around 1 billion people saw Olympics opening ceremony Noah and 4.7 billion people did see the olympics b dogg.
Thanks to both for making out the point…cheers
A fact that is totally missed here is that Australia has .3% of the worlds population, but won a staggering 5.1% of the total medal count.
For the US to get their 11.5% of the total medals, they needed a population 15 times as large as the Australian population that claimed the 5.1% of total medals.
China needed a population 66 times as large as Australia to claim just over double our medal count.
And the funny thing is that here in Australia, we were all a bit disappointed at the medal count…Our government is going to chip in a bit next time to help out. Seems that our total training budget for the games is fairly paltry compared to many nations. Most of our athletes are part timers that still have to work 9-5 jobs.
Australia, Per capita, the greatest sporting nation on the face of the earth!
@Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!!! :
Thanks for adding more information
4. After 1936 it was the first time that a country other than the United States or the Soviet Union has led the medal count.
13. For the fourth consecutive Olympics the overall medal count was won by the United States.
Amzing fact, what will London do next?
@befuddled
The country with the most number of gold medals leads the count.
Good day!
It is very informative and has a very good quality in it.
I like it…
Thank you very much for your time.
@Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!!!
Greatest sporting nation per capita on the face of the Earth? Bollocks.
Take a look at the figures posted here: http://www.symworld.com/medals
Gold Medals per capita leaves Australia ranked 7th behind countries with a fraction of your population. Taking GDP into account leaves Australia lanquishing in a miserable 24th. Well done to all Australian Athletes, but to call Australia’s elite sport funding ‘paltry’ is a huge insult to the many smaller nations that managed amazing results with a mere fraction of the budget of Australia.
Just wondering whether 4.7 billion people even have access to a television
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hi say hi back someone!!!!!!please
Go China ! China the best
haha cool, great post!
btw hi andrew.
21 Amazing Facts about the Beijing Olympics 2008 | micklanders on September 8th, 2008
[...] But no one can really think about the technology, money, and people involved behind it. So here are some facts that you must know. [...]
i am not big into the olympics but these are some interesting facts.
Oh c’mon, no mention of the BSOD?
Top 10 posts of 2008 on December 29th, 2008
[...] 21 Amazing Facts about Beijing Olympics 2008 [...]