Lacrosse is older than the printing press. Golf was invented before Abraham Lincoln was born, but basketball didn’t exist until decades after his death. Figure His first book on skating was published before the Declaration of Independence.
Sport, like society itself, is enduring and evolving. From antiquity to his 19th century, we present the fascinating origins of seven of his most popular games.
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1. Basketball
Basketball is the only major American sport whose inventor can be clearly identified. James Naismith wrote the sport’s first 13 rules in December 1891 as part of a class assignment at his School of Training at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Springfield, Massachusetts. Born and educated in Canada, Naismith came south to pursue his interest in physical education. Naismith tried to make a game that could be played in the gym during the winter. The first ever basketball game was played on December 21, 1891. read more
Closely related to the two ancient British sports of rugby and soccer (or association football), American football originated in North America, primarily in colleges in the United States, in the late 19th century. The person most responsible for the transition from games like formerly rugby to the sport of football as we know it today was Walter Camp, known as the “Father of American Football”. From 1876 until 1881, as an undergraduate and medical student at Yale, Camp played halfback and head coach, where he pioneered many of the rules and innovations that shape the modern game. read more
3. Baseball
References to baseball-like games in the United States date back to the 18th century. Like football, its most direct ancestors are thought to be two English games: rounder, a children’s game brought to New England by settlers, and cricket. In September 1845, a group of New York City men founded the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. One of them, Alexander Joy Cartwright, a volunteer firefighter and banker, codified a set of new rules that underpinned modern baseball, calling for, among other things, a diamond-shaped infield, a foul line, and a three-strike rule. Did. . read more
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4. Lacrosse
America’s oldest team sport, lacrosse dates back to 1100 AD when it was played by the Haudenosaunees (Iroquois) in the area of Canada bordering present-day New York and the states. The early games of lacrosse, played in Native American countries, involved hundreds of men and used wooden sticks, sometimes a net with his basket or pocket attached and a small ball wrapped in deerskin. was used. Lacrosse continued to develop in Canada and was named the national sport in 1859. In 1867, Montreal dentist George Beers wrote the sport’s first rulebook. read more
5. figure skating
The earliest evidence of ice skating dates back to when inhabitants of Scandinavia and Russia carved the shin bones of large animals such as horses, deer and sheep into skates for winter trips across frozen lakes and waterways. It dates back to about 3,000 BC. The technical discipline of figure skating developed in 18th-century England as people devoted more time to recreational activities. In 1772, Englishman Robert Jones wrote the first figure skating instructional book. papers on skating, We provided instructions on how to create circles, serpentine lines, spirals, figure eights and other shapes on ice. read more
6. Hockey
Ice hockey’s origins can be traced back to stick-and-ball games played in medieval or ancient Greece and Egypt. A version of the game evolved in his 18th-century Europe and soon spread to Canada and the United States. According to the International Ice Hockey Federation, the first organized ice hockey match was played on March 3, 1875 between his two teams of nine men at the Victoria Skating Club in Montreal. I was. read more
7. Golf
Versions of golf are known to have been played in Scotland as far back as at least the 15th century, one being played on large plots of land and the other on the streets of villages and towns. In 1744, Edinburgh’s prestigious Golf Company wrote down the first rules of the game, known as the Thirteen Articles, for a tournament at Edinburgh’s Leith Links. Over the next 100 years, these 13 rules were adopted by more than 30 of his clubs and helped formalize the sport as we know it today. read more
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