August 8 is the 220th day of the year (221st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 145 days remaining until the end of the year.
The Grand opening ceremony of Olympic 2008 will be held Friday 08-08-2008 in Beijing's "Bird Nest" national stadium. Beijing, China. The games are set to open at 8:08 p.m. local time (1208 UTC). The event will be broadcast to an estimated one billion television viewers around the world.
The number eight is considered so lucky that weddings on Friday, Aug. 8 - 8/8/08 - are in high demand. Minutes after the city clerk's office in San Francisco started taking reservations, the date was booked.
The number eight is considered lucky by numerologists and is especially auspicious in some Asian cultures. In Chinese, a day is considered lucky if it sounds like a word that is positive. The words for the number eight are ba in Mandarin and paat in Cantonese, which sound similar to the words for prosperity, fa in Mandarin and faat in Cantonese.
Last year, 7/7/07 was an extremely popular wedding date, and planners say they are expecting people to choose 9/9/09 as well, as the word for the number nine in Mandarin sounds like the word for longevity.
In China, press reports show that people try to get phone numbers, addresses, license plates and floors in buildings with the number eight in them. The telephone number 8888-8888 sold for $280,000 at an auction in China, according to a report several years ago by the Associated Press.
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