the x-ray of bound feet.

•The 2008 Olympic Mascots are called the Fuwa- the Fish (Beibei) ,

the Panda (Jingjing)

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the Tibetan Antelope (Yingying)

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the Swallow (Nini)

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and the Olympic Flame (Huanhuan)

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•The Olympic games began in about 776 BC •The Chinese spent about $40 billion on the 2008 Olympics!

•The 2008 Olympics began at 8:08 pm on 8 of August 2008, that’s the 08/08/08!

•The last Olympic gold medals that were made entirely out of gold were awarded in 1912!

•The gold and silver Olympic medals are made out of 92.5 percent silver, with the gold metal covered in six grams of gold. •At the first modern Olympics the winners were awarded silver medals and the second place getters won bronze!

•The first person to win the Olympic games was a chef!

•The Olympic games were one of the 2 central rituals in Ancient Greece • Married women who watched the games would be killed!

•At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, two Japanese pole vaulters who had tied for second place refused to participate in a tie-breaker. Instead, they cut their medals in half and gave half to one another so that each 'winner' ended up with a half-silver, half-bronze, medal. • China spent $23 billion to make Beijing more economical for the 2008 Olympics!

•The ancient Olympics were always held in Olympia, Athens •Most of the competitors in the Ancient Olympics were Greek

Beijing is the capital city of China. It is home to many tourist attractions such as: Dating back to 1420 in the south of the city, incorporates a group of sacred buildings surrounded by lush vegetation. In winter, having meditated for three days, the emperor would go up the Heavenly Altar in solemn ceremony to pray for a good harvest and to offer sacrifices.

Map of Beijing

The Great Wall of China was built over 2,000 years ago, by Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China . In Chinese the wall is called "Wan-Li Qang-Qeng" which means 10,000-Li Long Wall (about 5,000 km). Lying at the centre of Beijing, the Forbidden City, called Gu Gong in Chinese, was the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Now known as the Palace Museum, it is to the north of Tiananmen Square. It is the world's largest palace and covers 74 hectares. Surrounded by a six meter deep moat and a ten meter high wall there are 9,999 rooms.

Gymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, agility and coordination. Artistic Gymnastics is the best known and most popular of the gymnastics sports. It involves exercises on uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise, and vault (for women), and high bar, parallel bars, still rings, floor exercise, vault, and pommel horse (for men). It evolved from exercises used by the ancient Greeks. Other forms of gymnastics are rhythmic gymnastics, various trampolining sports and aerobic and acrobatic gymnastics.

Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on river, lakes or on the ocean. It is also one of the oldest Olympic Sports. There are lots of different types of rowing, you can do it in singles, doubles, fours or eights. You can do it in sculls or normal. Sculls is where each rower has two oars, one on either side. Normal is where each person has one oar on either side.

Famous New Zealand Rowers •Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell •Mahe Drysdale •Rob Waddell •Nathan Twaddle •George Bridgewater •Emma Twigg •Nathan Cohen 1st

Fencing has evolved from an ancient form of combat to one of the most tactical sports of the Olympic Games. It is one of only five sports to continually feature at the Olympics since Athens in 1896 – the others being athletics, swimming, cycling and gymnastics.

Competitive fencing as a sport flourished in Europe in the late 19th century and as a result, it was included in the first modern Olympics. The Hungarian Aladar Gerevich is the only athlete in any sport to win the same Olympic event six times. If the two staging of the Olympics had not been cancelled during World War II, Gerevich might have won the same event a staggering eight times!

Valerie Vili, née Adams, (born October 6, 1984) is a shot putter from New Zealand. She is the reigning Olympic champion, world champion and Commonwealth record-holder, having thrown a distance of 20.56 m.

Valerie won the World Youth Championships in 2001, with a throw of 16.87 m. She followed this up in 2002 by becoming World Junior champion, throwing 17.73 m, and had her first taste of senior success winning a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games with 17.45 m.

She finished fifth at the 2003 World Championships at eighteen years of age. At her first Olympics in 2004, Valerie finished eighth, while still recovering from an appendix removal she had just weeks before the competition. She won a gold medal at the 2008 Olympics.

Georgina Evers-Swindell Born: Hastings Age: 29 DOB: 10 October, 1979 Olympic Medals: 2004: Gold, 2008:Gold Siblings: Caroline Sport: Rowing (Double Sculls) Caroline Evers-Swindell Born: Hastings Age: 29 DOB: 10 October ,1979 Olympic Medals: 2004: Gold, 2008: Gold Siblings: Georgina Sport: Rowing (Double Sculls)

Lisbeth "Libby" Constance Trickett (Lenton) (born 28 January 1985, in Townsville, Queensland, Australia) is a World Record Holding and Olympic Gold Medallist swimmer from Australia. She was also a gold medallist at the 2004 Summer Olympics. She holds 5 World Records, two in long course (50m). This year she also won 2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze!

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