10 Things You Don’t Want To Miss At The 2008 Summer Olympics

To kick-start the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the official flame, which has traveled via the torch relay for the last 129 days and has covered 85,000 miles – the longest relay since the beginning of the tradition at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, will be lit and the approximately 10,500 athletes will proudly walk into the stadium. The countries will be led by Greece, who traditionally enter first, and will be placed in order by stroke count with the Simplified Chinese characters instead of the usual alphabetical order. For example, Australia will enter in the 203rd position because the character is written in 15 strokes and they will be followed by Zambia whose character is written in 16 strokes. There are multiple acts scheduled to perform including Canada’s Celine Dion, Taiwan’s Jay Chou and a group of over a hundred Indigenous Taiwanese dancers. Tune into NBC at 7:30pm EST to catch the beginning of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

2. Michael Phelps’ Quest For 8 Gold Medals