250 Fun Facts
250 Fun Facts: Technology, Sports, Music, Art & Famous Places
Sports & Games Facts
A standard golf ball has around 300 to 500 dimples, which help it fly farther.
In tennis, a score of zero is called "love." One popular theory says it comes from the French word "l'oeuf," meaning egg, because a zero looks like an egg.
Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, who used peach baskets as the first hoops.
Volleyball was invented in 1895 and was originally called "mintonette."
Olympic gold medals are mostly made of silver, with a coating of real gold.
The marathon distance of 42.195 kilometres was fixed after the 1908 London Olympics, when the route was set to finish in front of the royal box.
In 1939, a "timeless" Test match between South Africa and England went on for ten days and still ended in a draw, because the English team had to leave to catch their ship home.
Sachin Tendulkar was the first man to score a double century in a one-day international cricket match, in 2010.
India won its first Cricket World Cup in 1983, led by captain Kapil Dev.
India once dominated Olympic hockey
India's men's hockey team won eight Olympic gold medals, including six in a row from 1928 to 1956. The legendary player Dhyan Chand starred in three of those wins, and India celebrates National Sports Day every year on 29 August, his birthday.
Neeraj Chopra won India's first Olympic gold medal in athletics, in the javelin throw at the Tokyo Olympics.
Shooter Abhinav Bindra became India's first individual Olympic gold medallist in 2008.
Viswanathan Anand became India's first chess grandmaster in 1988.
Usain Bolt set the men's 100-metre world record of 9.58 seconds in 2009.
The first FIFA World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930.
Brazil won its fifth men's FIFA World Cup title in 2002.
In the Tour de France, the overall leader wears a yellow jersey.
Table tennis began as an after-dinner game in Victorian England, sometimes played with books as a net.
Legend says rugby began in 1823 when a pupil at Rugby School in England picked up the ball and ran with it during a football match.
Mallakhamb is India's traditional pole gymnastics
Mallakhamb, meaning "wrestler's pole," is a sport where athletes perform yoga-like poses, spins and balances on a vertical wooden pole or a hanging rope. It has been practised in India for centuries, especially in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, and was originally used by wrestlers to build strength and flexibility.
A baseball has 108 double stitches.
Ice hockey pucks are frozen before games so they bounce less on the ice.
In 1971, astronaut Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the Moon.
Sumo wrestling is widely seen as Japan's national sport and has roots going back more than 1,000 years.
Formula 1 cars create so much downforce at high speed that, in theory, they could drive upside down on the ceiling of a tunnel.
At Wimbledon, players must dress almost entirely in white.
Wimbledon, first held in 1877, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world.
Women competed in the modern Olympic Games for the first time in Paris in 1900.
A badminton shuttlecock can travel at more than 400 km/h when smashed, making it the fastest object in any racket sport.
The Rubik's Cube has over 43 quintillion possible combinations
Hungarian architecture professor Ernő Rubik invented his famous cube in 1974 to help explain 3D shapes to his students. It took him about a month to solve it himself. A standard cube can be arranged in more than 43 quintillion different ways, yet expert "speedcubers" can solve it in just a few seconds.
Monopoly was based on an earlier game called The Landlord's Game, created by Elizabeth Magie in 1904 to show the problems with unfair land ownership.
The letter scores in Scrabble were based on how often each letter appeared on the front page of The New York Times.
The king of hearts is the only king in a standard deck of playing cards without a moustache.
"Jenga" comes from a Swahili word meaning "build."
Tetris was created in 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, a computer engineer in the Soviet Union.
The creator of Pac-Man said he was inspired by a pizza with one slice missing.
Nintendo's famous plumber Mario was first known as "Jumpman."
The yo-yo is one of the oldest toys in the world, with examples dating back to ancient Greece.
The name LEGO comes from the Danish words "leg godt," meaning "play well."
Carrom is a favourite tabletop game across South Asia
Carrom is played by flicking a heavy disc called a striker to knock wooden pieces into the board's four corner pockets. It's thought to have developed in South Asia, and it's enjoyed in homes, clubs and tournaments across India, Sri Lanka and beyond. The game even has its own international federation and world championships.
Early golf balls were made of wood, and later of leather stuffed with feathers.
The fastest ball ever officially recorded in international cricket was bowled by Shoaib Akhtar in 2003, at 161.3 km/h.
Gujarat's International Kite Festival, held around Uttarayan in January, fills the sky with thousands of colourful kites.
The first ever game of basketball ended with a score of just 1–0.
Snooker was invented by British army officers in India in the 1870s.
The fuzzy covering on a tennis ball slows it down in the air and helps players control spin.
The longest tennis match in history, between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon in 2010, lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days.
P. V. Sindhu became the first Indian woman to win two individual Olympic medals, with a silver in 2016 and a bronze at the Tokyo Olympics.
Boxer Mary Kom is a six-time world champion.
The Paralympic Games grew from a hospital sports event
In 1948, doctor Ludwig Guttmann organised a sports competition for injured World War II veterans at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England. The event grew year by year, and in 1960 the first official Paralympic Games were held in Rome. Today, the Paralympics are one of the biggest sporting events in the world.
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