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Visitors to this link will find articles of interest regarding
sports figures, teams and little known facts.
PAGE CONTENTS:
Sports Pot Pourri
Volleyball
SPORTS POT POURRI
Barbara Jo Rubin became the first female jockey to win a horse race on February 22, 1969. She
rode Cohesian to victory at CharlestownRacetrack in West Virginia.
The name of the game "cricket" is believed to have been derived inthe late 1500s from the
Middle French word criquet, meaning a"goalpost."
Badminton was once known as battledore and shuttlecock.
The game as we know it today took its name from Badminton House in Gloucestershire,England - home of the Duke of Beaufort.
Tonya Harding was the first American ice skater
to successfully land a triple axel in competition.
A Harlem-born, African American bicycle messenger
went on to win a silver medal in cycling at the 1984 Olympics. His name was Nelson "The Cheetah" Vails.
Sports historians have traced roller skating to the early 1800s
whenan unknown Dutchman sought to find a warm-weather equivalent to iceskating. He decided to attach wooden disks to shoes;
after a shortperiod of refinement, roller skating became a popular pastime in Holland. The sport attained even greater popularity
among the NorthAmerican public with the introduction of the steel wheel with ballbearings.
The first female athlete to appear in a Wheaties "Breakfast of Champions" television commercial
was Mary Lou Retton, shortly after her gold medal win at the 1984 summer Olympics.
Volleyball was invented in a Holyoke, Massachusetts YMCA in 1895. Its inventor was William George Morgan. The game was
first called "mintonette" and was played by hitting a basketball over a rope.
On May 17, 1875, Aristides was the winner of the first Kentucky
Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.
Athletic supporters were introduced in 1874 to help bicycle
riders as they pedaled over cobblestone roads. The term "jock strap" comes from these early "bicycle jockeys?"
(Source: ILoveBacon.com)
Some form of bowling is played in more than 90 countries around the world.
Approximately 100 million people participate in bowling today.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST PUBLICLY TELEVISED SPORTING
EVENT? It was a Japanese baseball game, broadcast on September 27, 1931. The Ushigome and Awazi Schuciku
Higher Elementary Schools battled it out on the Tozuka Baseball Ground, watched by viewers on 8-by-5-inch screens.
Which sort of football discourages kicking the
ball? According to the rules of Gaelic football, players may punch the ball, but the punching motion must be clearly
visible to the referee. Players may not pick up the ball off the ground unless they first get their toe under the ball.
Which sport was the first filmed? Boxing
was the first sport to be filmed. Thomas A. Edison filmed a boxing match between Jack Cushing and Mike Leonard in 1894.
Who coined the slogan, "You can't tell the players
without a scorecard"? Baseball's first professional concessionaire, Harry M. Stevens, who used it when he started
hawking ballpark programs in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1880s.
WHAT SPORTS PERSONALITY SAID, “THE OPERA
AIN'T OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS”? It was not Yogi Berra. Former Washington Bullets coach Dick Motta popularized
the saying during the 1978 NBA playoffs, but it was Dan Cook, a television sports announcer and writer for the San Antonio
Express-News, who invented it.
WHEN WAS THE FIRST INDIANAPOLIS 500? The
500-mile race was first held on May 30, 1911, when Ray Harroun won in 6 hours, 42 minutes, 8 seconds. His average speed was
74.59 miles per hour.
Which sport claims the most injuries? The
sport with the largest expenses (medical, legal, and others) due to injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms in 1995 was bicycling,
with costs exceeding $4 billion. More than half a million bicycling injuries were documented. A huge percentage of those injuries
were head injuries, which could have been prevented had riders worn protective helmets.
Who developed table tennis? Table
tennis was originally played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles made from cigar-box lids. It was created in
the 1880s by James Gibb, a British engineer who wanted an invigorating game he could play indoors when it was raining. Named
"Gossima," the game was first marketed with celluloid balls, which replaced Gibb's corks. After the equipment manufacturer
renamed the game "Ping-Pong" in 1901, it became a hot seller.
Volleyball
In 1895, William Morgan invented the game of volleyball by combining
elements of tennis, baseball, basketball and handball. He raised a tennis net to 6 feet, 6inches above the ground and
wrote rules for the game, which required a team to ground the ball on their opposing tem's side of the net in no more than
three tries. Originally, 21 points won the game, but today 15 points wins.
Volleyball is an Olympic sport, both in team and 2-man play. The
U.S. mens' team won their first gold medal in volleyball at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, while the U.S. womens'
team took home a silver medal.
Volleyball was invented by an American, and yet it was more popular elsewhere
in the world for decades, before becoming popular in the United States. For many years, only soccer was more popular
around the world.
* Excerpted from the book "American Firsts (Innovations, Discoveries,
and Gadgets Born in the U.S.A.)", by Stephen J. Spignesi, ©2004 by Stephen J. Spignesi. Used without permission, but
with the best of intentions.
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