Bang the seven-year anticipation of the London Olympics 2012 ends today with a spectacular opening ceremony under the aegis of noted Hollywood director Danny Boyle. The opening ceremony will begin at 9 p.m. locally. That's 4 p.m. on the east coast, 1 p.m. in the bay and the rest of the west coast. The ceremony shall begin with the sound of a 27-ton bell, the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world, forged at London's 442-year-old Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which made London's Big Ben and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell.

London Olympics 2012 is officially known as The Games f the XXX Olympiad. However this is not the first time that the country has held the historic  once in four years game. This is the third dosage of the mammoth event. The first, in 1908, was moved from Rome to London at almost the last minute because of the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The second London Games, in 1948, was known as the Austerity Games, coming so soon after the devastation of World War II. No Olympic Village was built, athletes were on rations and were asked to bring their own toiletries. Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union did not compete. But it was the biggest Olympics to that point (59 countries and more than 4,000 athletes), and it was the first Olympic Games to be featured on television.

However London Olympics 2012 will go down the history as the maximum participated games which includes women from all countries. There will be 205 countries, participating in  302 or more events while more than 10,500 athletes expected to compete. Even the patronage has increased beyond figments of imagination. As per rough estimates nearly 9 million are going to watch live and 4 billion on televisions. (With inputs from internet-AW AarKay)