Friday Factoids (2006.05)

February 3, 2006 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

It’s the SuperBowl this weekend, but given I don’t follow American Football, this week’s factoids list is a general sports one.

In the NHL in the 1960’s, the league decided that home teams would wear white, while visiting teams would wear their dark jerseys. The reasoning behind this was that it would be more difficult to keep white uniforms clean while on the road.
Golf was banned in England in 1457 because it was considered a distraction from the serious pursuit of archery.
The Iditarod dog sled race – from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska – commemorates an emergency operation in 1925 to get medical supplies to Nome following a diphtheria epidemic.
Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.
The silhouette on the Major League Baseball logo is Harmon Killebrew.
Bulgaria was the only football team in the 1994 World Cup in which all 11 players’ last names ended with the letters “OV”.
Twenty-three days after Roger Bannister ran the most famous mile of all time (he ran it in 3:59.4), his fellow Briton, Diane Leather, became the first woman to break five minutes with a 4:59.6 seconds, in Birmingham, England, on May 29, 1954.
Tennis pro Evonne Goolagong’s last name means “kangaroo’s nose” in Australia’s aboriginal language.
Basketball was invented in 1891 by Canadian Dr. James Naismith.
Silverstone has hosted the British Grand Prix regularly since the start of the Formula One championship in 1950 (in which it was the first race of the first ever official World Championship) and every year since 1987; it alternated with Brands Hatch between 1964 and 1986, and with Aintree (better known as a horse-racing course) between 1955 and 1962.