Amazing facts about Beijing Olympics 2008

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* After 1936 it was the first time that a country other than the United States or the Soviet Union has led the medal count.

* India has 17% of the world’s population. They won 0.31% of Olympic medals.

* 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.

* China: 19.8% of population, won 10.4% of medals.

* United States: 4.6% of population, 11.5% medals.

* NBColympics.com had 70 million page views on 8/8/08 which was 50 million more than the peak of Athens Olympics.

* Roughly 4 1 billion people around the world saw the opening ceremony and a total of 4.7 billion watched the olymics.

*In the closing ceremony about 2,583 special lights were applied.

The lighting equipments, weighing over 300 tons, were installed in five months.

* 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.

* For the fourth consecutive Olympics the overall medal count was won by the United States.

* 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 seven million tickets were made available to the public.