Sports facts

Chess game

• Did you know that you can play the first four turns in a game of chess in 318,979,564,000 ways?
• Soccer is the world's most popular game.
• Golf was first played by ancient Romans who used bent wooden sticks and leather ball stuffed with feathers for this purpose.
• National Football League (NFL) used to be APFA before June 1922.
• Turkey knocked Spain out during a World Cup qualifier by drawing straws. The straws were picked by a blindfolded Italian boy Luigi Franco.
• Laos, Thailand and Cambodia have built a 27-hole golf course on the border between the three countries. Most of this golf course was previously a minefield.
• The first boxing match ever filmed was between Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing in 1894.
  
  
  
• Babe Ruth was the first one to order a bat with a knob on it, back in 1919.
• Cyclists cover a distance of about 2,300 miles during the Tour de France cycle race.
• In bowling, three successive strikes are called "turkey". This term originated in the 19th century when first team member to do this was rewarded with a turkey.
• Jousting is the state sport of Maryland.
• During the World War II a lot of players were called to duty, thus the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined to become The Steagles.
• Since the inclusion of field hockey in Summer Olympics in 1908, it has been played in every Olympic Games except 1924 due to the lack of an international sporting structure.
• Yankees were the first one to identify their team of baseball players by numbers.
  There are four major types of contests of the ice hockey, that are: slopestyle, rail jam, boarder cross, and halfpipe.
• There are 336 dimples on a golf ball and its weight is estimated to be 1.62 oz.
• Although swimming was a part of the first modern Summer Olympic Games played in 1896, but the backstroke was included as in Olympic event in second Summer Olympics plaed in 1900.
• The referee used to toss a jump ball after every basket until 1937.
• On June 14 1974, Carlos Caszely of Chile was the first player to be shown a red card in a match of World Cup.
• In 1997, Martina Hingis of Switzerland became the youngest woman to be ranked world number 1 player of tennis. She was only 16 years old then.
• The real name of Pele is Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Pele was his nickname.
• A practice match of Arsenal was the first soccer match to be telecasted on TV.
• Jackie Robinson was the first baseball player to be named rookie of the year. This happened in 1947.
• Butterfly wasn't accepted as a separate style until 1952. Before that it was considered a variant of Breaststroke.
• A German player named Boris Becker won Wimbledon tennis tournament at the age of 17 in 1985.