Tuesday Trivia

How about trivia relating to recreation? It's still summer, even if most of the kids are back in school now. So let's hear it for GAMES, SPORTS, AND .... TV!!!


ABOUT GAMES:

There are 318,979,564,000 possible combinations of the first four moves in Chess.

The most expensive Monopoly set ever created is worth $2 million. The board is made of gold and the pieces are jewel- encrusted.

Monopoly is the best-selling board game in the world. It is produced in 26 different languages.

Scrabble inventor Alfred Mosher Butts originally named his game "Criss Cross", and sold a few hundred sets under that name. Only later did the name get changed to Scrabble

Many re-publishes in the history of Milton Bradley's Life board game have taken place since its creation in 1860. The years for these updates include 1866, 1959, 1961, 1978, 1985, 1992, and 2005. As times have changed, so has the game!

Dominoes were first played in the courts of Venice and Naples in Italy. The tiles were originally constructed by gluing and pinning two sheets of ebony on either side of the bone tile. This prevented cheating by being able to see the pip value from the back of the tile in certain lights.

A board game that appeared very similar to checkers (called "Draughts" in Great Britain} was discovered in the ruins of the ancient city of Ur in modern day Iraq. This board game dates to about 3000 B.C.

Coin-operated gaming devices in the late 1800s included games with large revolving wheels divided into color segments. Players wagered on which color the wheel would stop. They're considered the forerunners of modern slot machines, even though they didn't have reels. The first recognizably modern three-reel slot was the Liberty Bell, invented by Charles Fey in San Francisco in 1899. The machine was so popular that for many years all slot machines were referred to as bell machines.

The bar symbol used on modern slot machines is derived from a Bell Fruit Gum logo. The gum was dispensed in slots designed by Herbert Mills in Chicago in 1910, and other fruit symbols on slots were derived from the gum flavors.

Among the most popular early slots were poker games, although the machines did not usually pay out coins. Payoffs had to come from the operator. After the introduction of the Liberty Bell, poker-based slots waned in popularity, until the invention of video poker in the 1970s.

The game of 21 got its common nickname, blackjack, from a practice in illegal casinos in the early 1900s. Some casinos paid a bonus if a two-card 21 was made up of an ace and jack of spades. Others paid bonuses if an ace of spades was accompanied by a jack of either clubs or spades. The black jack was the key to the bonus, and became the name of the game.

Horizontal gaming wheels, such as those used in roulette, were invented in England in 1720 for a game called roly-poly. Roly-poly was similar to roulette, except there were no numbers on the wheel. There were alternating white spaces and black spaces, along with a "bar black" space and a "bar white" space. The "bar" spaces were the equivalents of zero and double-zero -- if the ball landed in either space, bets on black or white lost. Roly-poly was banned in England in 1745, but the horizontal wheel traveled well. By 1796, modern roulette was being played in France.

The kings in decks of playing cards represent real leaders and conquerors from history, although not all had the title of king. The deck we use today is based on cards designed in 15th-century France. The king of spades represents the Biblical King David, the king of clubs represents Alexander the Great, the king of hearts represents Charlemagne and the king of diamonds represents Julius Caesar.
(I actually knew this one! WooHoo!!!)

ABOUT SPORTS:

In 1905, 18 men died from injuries sustained on the foot- ball field. President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in and instituted safety measures to make the game safer

In 1935 Jesse Owens broke 4 world records in 45 minutes.

In the 1950's the hula hoop was banned in Tokyo due to the large number of traffic accidents it caused.

The only two people in the baseball hall of fame that had nothing to do with baseball (i.e they did not play, coach, own a team, etc.) are Abbott and Costello.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the only city in the U.S. with three sports teams that all wear the same colors.

Max Baer once shouted out in the middle of a world title boxing fight 'Ma, he's killing me!'

Jackie Robinson was the only person to letter in four sports at UCLA. Of all of them, he supposedly liked baseball the least.

St. Bernard is the patron saint of skiers.

The only bone not broken so far during any ski accident is one located in the inner ear. [Good grief!!]

In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, homerun.

The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled around him. [And I thought it was so we women could admire their buns!!]

The two quickest goals scored in the NHL were three seconds apart.

Dartboards are made out of horse hairs.

The pitches that Babe Ruth hit for his last-ever homerun and that Joe DiMaggio hit for his first-ever homerun where thrown by the same man.

Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball.

In case you ever find yourself piloting a dogsled, shout "Jee!" to make the dogs turn left and "Ha!" to go right.

Olympic Badminton rules say that the bird has to have exactly fourteen feathers.

The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continually held sports event in the United States (1875); the second oldest is the Westminister Kennel Club Dog Show (1876).

[The next 2 are especially for Patti!]
The last NASCAR driver to serve jail time for running moonshine was Buddy Arrington.

Race car is a palindrome. What's a palindrome, you ask? Something spelled the same way forward and backwards!

No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl. (Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, is not a dome, there is a large hole in the roof.) [Those Texans will do anything to win!! LOL!]

The Cincinnati Reds baseball team name was officially changed to the Redlegs during the anti-communist movement.

Table tennis balls have been known to travel off the paddle at speeds up to 105.6 miles per hour.

While the Chinese invented gunpowder, they were not the first to develop firearms.

Sam Colt invented the "revolving pistol." Therefore, all revolvers are correctly called pistols.

A 12 gauge "rifled slug" does not spin, even though there are grooves on it's bearing surface. A slug actually travels like a dart.

Revolvers cannot be silenced, due to all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.

A bullet fired from the 7.62 x 51mm NATO cartridge (also called the .308 Winchester) is still supersonic at 1000 yards.

Baseballer Connie Mack's real name was Cornelius McGilicuddy.

Australian Rules Football was originally designed to give cricketers something to play during the off season.

Many Japanese golfers carry "hole-in-one" insurance, because it is traditional in Japan to share one's good luck by sending gifts to all your friends when you get an "ace." The price for what the Japanese term an "albatross" can often reach $10,000.

Cathy Rigby is the only woman to pose nude for Sports Illustrated. (August 1972)

ABOUT TV:

"Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home."
David Frost (1939-), English satirist and television presenter
[THAT'S A FLAT FACT!!!!]

Did you know that presently there are more than 1,5 billion TV sets in use? China has the most TV sets with 300 million, but U.S. citizens watch the most TV. By age 65, an American would have watched the equivalent of 9 years uninterrupted screening, viewing more than 20,000 TV commercials per year. That's a lot of time spent in front of the tube!

The first TV interview was made with Irish actress Peggy O'Neil in April 1930. The first daily broadcast was started by the BBC in November 1936.

The first TV commercial was a 20-second ad for a Bulova clock, broadcasted by WNBT, New York during a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies in July 1941. Bulova paid $9 for that first TV spot.

The first regular TV soap was DuMont TV's A Woman to Remember, which began its run in February 1947.

The first televised sporting event was a Japanese elementary school baseball game, broadcast in September 1931.

The world's first TV news helicopter was introduced by KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles on 4 July 1958.

The video recording machine was invented by the Ampex corporation of California in 1956. The first video recorder, the Ampex VR1000, stood 3 feet, three inches, and weighed as much as a small car: 1,466 pounds.