Facts of Sports

• The first recorded reference to cricket dates back to 1272.
• The highjump method of jumping head first and landing on their back is called the Fosbury Flop.
• Clay pigeon shooting was once known as Inanimate bird shooting.
• The American dart game 'Cricket' is known in Britain as 'Mickey Mouse'.
• Australian Ron Clarke set 18 World Records as a long distance runner but never won an Olympic title.
• The motto for the Olympic Games is Citius - Altius - Fortius (Faster - Higher - Stronger).
• The 180m sprint of the776 BC Olympics (the earliest recorded) was won by Coroebus .
• Cricketer Dennis Lillee once tried to use an Aluminium bat of his own design called 'The Combat'.
• The large disk used in Tiddlywinks is called a Squidger.
• A racehorse which has never won a race is refereed to as a Maiden.
• Orienteering originated in Sweden.
• Snooker originated in India.
• The first reference to a money prise in a horse race is a prise offered by Richard I in 1195.
• Darts is the most popular sport played in Britain.
• The word 'love' meaning 'no score' comes from the word ' L`oeuf ' which means 'egg'.
• A soccer ball has 32 panels.
• Draughts is older than chess.
• To a yachtsman, a fresh breeze is about 20 knots.
• The first automobile racetrack in America was the 'Indianapolis Motor Speedway', which consisted of 3 million cobblestones.
• There are only 7 possible opening moves in draughts.
• The collecting of Beer mats is called Tegestology.
• When driven from a tee, a golf ball travels at over 270 km/h.
• Harry Drake fired an arrow 1871.8 metres, from a crossbow, on 30 July 1988
• In August 1985, Thelma Pitt-Turner set a womens record by completing a marathon at Hastings, New Zealand, in 7 hours 58 minutes. She was 82 at the time.
• The first perfect nine innings baseball game (pitcher pitches 27 out, no hits, no runs) was achieved by John Lee Richmond on 12 June 1880.
• The largest crowd for a basketball game was 800,000 people at the Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece on 4 April 1968.
• The odds on dealing 13 cards of one suit are 158,753,389,899 to 1. The odds on dealing the perfect hand (13 cards of one suit) to a particular player is 635,013,559,559 to 1 and the odds on dealing a perfect game (4 players receiving a perfect hand) are 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,599,999 to 1.
• Garry Chapman scored 17 runs off a single delivery (all run with no overthrow) in a game of cricket on 13 October 1990. (he hit the ball into a patch of 10 inch high grass)
• The most expensive commercial boardgame is the Deluxe version of Outrage!, which retails at £3995.
• The world's largest gambling win was US $111,240,463.10 in the Powerball lottery on 7 July 1993
• Grabatology is the collecting of ties.
• The highest paid odds on a horserace are 3,072,887 to 1. For a 5p accumulator bet on 5 horses, an unnamed woman won £153,644.40 (which was paid out by Ladbrokes, the world's largest bookmaker).
• On the 24 April 1993, Charles Servizio completed 46,001 push-ups (press-ups) in 24 hours, at Fontana, California, USA.
• When new, a regulation cricket ball weighs 5.5 ounces.
• Trevor Francis was the first soccer player to be transferred for £1 000 000 ( Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest 1979 )
• The flights on a dart are made from turkey feathers.
• The first major car rally won by a woman was in Rome, 1960. (Pat Moss)
• The minimum number of darts required to finish a single in, double out game of 501 is 9.
• The Roman Emperor Nero killed his wife after she 'scalded' him for going to the races.
• The Australian term for extras in cricket are 'sundries'.
• In the 1950's the hula hoop was banned in Tokyo due to the large number of traffic accidents it caused.
• Max Baer once shouted out in the middle of a world title boxing fight 'Ma, he's killing me!'.
• The yo-yo originated in the Philippines, where it was used as a weapon in hunting.
• Boules, or Petanque, is France's second most played sport.
• In 1935 Jesse Owens broke 4 world records in 45 minutes.
• On 15th May 1948, the Australian touring team scored a world record total of runs in one day. In just under six hours they made 721 all out against Essex, at Southchurch Park, Southend.
• The most common injury in ten pin bowling is a sore thumb.
• Mick Jaggers favourite game is cricket.
• Round arm bowling in cricket was invented by Christina Wells.
• Baseball star Babe Ruth was born George Herman Ruth. During his sporting career he played in 2503 games and had a lifetime batting average of .342.
• English batsman, Arthur Shrewbury, shot himself believing he was afflicted with an incurable disease.
• Shrove Tuesday is the day the Pancake races are run on.
• The first rugby club was formed in 1843.
• In charades, pushing away means you're cold.
• The Ancient Greek name for a racecourse is the Hippodrome.
• What is black, frozen and measures 3 inches by 1 inches? An ice-hockey puck.
• When kicked in the groin, a soccer player has been 'banjoed'.
• US President, Richard Nixon, tried to offer tactics to an American Football team.
• Johnny Weissmuller, the Hollywood Tarzan won swimming gold medals in the Olympics in 1924.
• Marcellus, is the middle name of Cassius Clay.
• The 1970 World cup football match between El Savador and Honduras was so highly charged that it resulted in the two countries embarking on a 3 day war.
• Karate, often considered Japan's national sport, didn't come to Japan until 1916.
• The nickname of the New Zealand Rugby team is 'The All Blacks',which came about through a newspaper printing error.
• Joe Davis, former world Snooker champion, only had one good eye.
• In Thailand, kite-flying is a major sport with teams of up to twenty people competing against each other.
• John L. Sullivan, a famous bareknuckle boxer, once took 75 rounds to knock out his opponent, Jake Kilrain
• Pistols were first used in the Olympic games shooting events in 1984.
• There are over 10 000 golf courses in the United States.
• Australian meteorologist Nils Lied, while in Antartica, drove a golf ball 2414 metres.
• Cystallite is the material snooker balls are made from.
• At Darts, a score of 26 is called 'bed and breakfast'.
• If you were at the Brickyard you would be playing Motor racing (it’s the nickname for the Indianapolis circuit).
• Ferdie Adoboe set a world record on 28 July 1983 by running 100 yards in 12.8 seconds … backwards.
• The average age of a female Olympic competitor is 20.
• A golf green hole in a minimum of 4 inches.
• The bar used for weightlifting weighs 20 kilograms.
• It is forbidden for an Olympic wrestler to twist his opponents toes.
• The board game Monopoly was originally rejected by Parker Brothers, who claimed it had 52 fundamental errors.
• Formula One Driver, Jackie Stewart, who won three motor racing world championships, also has been the British clay pigeon shooter five times.
• Rugby was discovered by accident. A student during a game of football decided to pick up the ball and run to the opposition goal - thus the formation of rugby.
• Ray Ewry, the American athlete, won three gold medals at the 1900 Olympic Games had been paralysed and confined to a wheelchair as a child.
• The first man to swim the English Channel without a life jacket was Captain Matthew Webb, who died trying to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls.
• Football was played in the twelfth century, though without any rules.