By: Lucas Wantuck Welcome to the fourth edition of “Ten Interesting Facts Around the World,” and the first edition in November! For this edition, we will be covering sports! So, without further ado, let’s get on with the facts! 1. The first Olympic Games were held over three thousand years ago. Created in 776 BC, the Greeks held the first Olympic Games! They included foot races, wrestling, javelin throwing, and much, much more! The first Olympic Games were held in Olympia, hence the name, and were mainly held to honor the Greek god Zeus. 2. The first sport is much older than you’d think. Wrestling, an ancient sport with evidence of people playing it in prehistoric cave paintings and in the Epic of Gilgamesh, has been present in various cultures for over 5,000 years! Some of the first places that first participated in wrestling were Japan, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mongolia, making wrestling both a prominent ancient sport, and one of, if not the first, sports ever! 1. American football didn’t start in America. Football, a popular American sport, developed from rugby, a sport originally from England. Rugby was first created during a soccer match in Rugby, England when a player grabbed the ball and ran across the field. 4. The longest match in tennis history was over 11 hours long! Taking place in the Wimbledon Championships in Wimbledon, London, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played the longest match ever, coming in at 11 hours and 5 minutes! The game took place over three days because the way the rules of tennis were made didn’t prevent the game from lasting that long! 5. The largest amount of non-stop push-ups is over ten thousand! Coming in at 10,507 push-ups, Minoru Yoshida of Japan was able to set a world record that I don’t think anyone else could ever beat! The record was broken in 1980, breaking the then-current record of 7,650 push-ups. Because the new record was practically unbreakable, Guinness stopped recording non-stop push-ups and switched to most push-ups in 24 hours. 6. The king of Scotland once banned golf! In 1457, King James II of Scotland banned golf entirely because Scotland was preparing to defend themselves against the Auld Enemy. Because of this, they needed as many soldiers as they could get, but because most of the people were obsessed with golf, nobody wanted to enlist in the army. So, the king had to ban golf so that he could recruit more people. 7. The first winner of the Olympic Games was actually a cook! Going back to the first Olympic Games, the winner of the footrace wasn’t a soldier or gladiator, but actually a cook and baker by the name of Coroebus of Elis. He came from the ancient city of Elis, and he represented his home during the race. 8. Chess has been around for a very long time. Though most people know chess as the sport with knights, rooks, queens, kings, pawns, and bishops, chess wasn’t exactly the same now as it was when it originated in India around 600 AD. The game was called chaturanga, and it was played similarly to modern chess with players attempting to protect a specific piece while also trying to defeat their opponent’s piece. Later on, the game caught on all around the world, and in the 16th century, the game evolved into the chess we know today. 9. Golf is one of the only sports to ever be played on the moon! In 1971 during the Apollo 14 mission, Alan Shepard played a quick game of golf on the moon and hit a golf ball using a six-iron. Along with golf, the other sport to be played on the moon was javelin toss. What’s even cooler, is that both games were played during the same visit to the moon. 10. Japan has the world's largest bowling alley. Consisting of 116 lanes, the Inazawa Bowling Centre in Inazawa City, Japan is the largest bowling alley to ever exist. The bowling alley got a Guinness world record because of its sheer size coming in at a whopping 182,000 square feet! I hope that you learned something new about the exciting world and history of sports!
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