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Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ2702816 ↗
Source-derived summary

This article contains a chronological summary of major events from the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

Calendar

All dates are Beijing Time (UTC+8)

Day-by-day summaries

6 August

Football

The first competitions of the Games started at 5:00pm CST (UTC+8). The first events were women's football (soccer) matches. The day was devoted to women's football.

7 August

Football

The first football (soccer) matches for men began on this day. The day was devoted to men's football matches.

8 August

Opening Ceremony

Starting at 8:00 pm CST (UTC+8), the four-hour opening ceremony was attended by 91,000 spectators, including more than 100 world leaders. The spectacle was directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou, and the Olympic Cauldron was lit by former Chinese gymnast Li Ning.

Equestrian

The first events started in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, with eventing in equestrian sports.

Day 1: 9 August

Archery

South Korea set an Olympic record in the ranking round of the women's team archery event.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chronological, summary and Summer, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2008—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Chronological, summary and Summer is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2702816. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics primary sources, Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics archive and Chronological research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.