6th November: Basketball day

Celebrates the birth in 1861 of James Naismith, the Canadian physical education instructor. He was working at the YMCA Training School (now Springfield College) in Massachusetts when the principal asked him to invent a safe indoor game to replace boring exercises during winter. Naismith came up with the game of Basketball. 10 things you might not know about basketball:

1. The first baskets were Peach baskets and did not have a hole in the bottom, so every time anyone scored, someone would have to climb up a ladder to get the ball out of the basket. When people got fed up of this, the bottoms were removed from the baskets, but it was still necessary to poke them out with a long stick.
2. The first balls were soccer balls - then specially made brown balls. Orange balls were only introduced in the 1950s.
3. The back board behind the basket was introduced because in early games, the basket would be nailed to a mezzanine balcony and the audience had a tendency to interfere with shots.
4. Dribbling, or repeated bouncing of the ball, was actually illegal in the original rules. When it was first allowed, it wasn't used much because the balls were asymmetrical, but around the 1950s, when it became possible to manufacture perfectly round balls, it caught on to become a major part of the game.
5. According to his diary, Naismith had tried inventing several games before, but these games had all failed - so he was nervous about introducing yet another one.
6. The first ever game was played with nine players in the YMCA gymnasium in Albany, New York on January 20, 1892. The court was smaller than the ones used today, and only one point was scored.
7. Most professional basketball players are very tall. According to a survey given to all NBA teams, the average height of all NBA players is just under 6 feet 7 inches (2.01m). The tallest players ever in the NBA were Manute Bol and Gheorghe Mureşan, who were both 7 feet 7 inches (2.31m) tall. The tallest player now is Sim Bhullar, who is 7 feet 5 inches (2.26m). The tallest female player was Margo Dydek at 7 feet 2 inches. At the other extreme, the shortest player ever to play in the NBA is Muggsy Bogues at 5 feet 3 inches (1.60m).
8. Men's basketball has been a Summer Olympic sport since the Berlin Olympics in 1936. The USA has won the most Gold medals - 14. The USSR won twice and Argentina and Yugoslavia once each. Women's basketball became an Olympic sport in 1976.
9. Basketball is the national sport of Lithuania and Georgia. It is the summer national sport in Latvia, where ice hockey is the winter national sport.
10. One of the many variations of the game is unicycle basketball, where the game is played with the players all riding unicycles.

BTW, my novel, Death and Faxes is out now. 

It's about a young psychic who is asked by a detective to help track down a serial killer. At first, she is reluctant - but the ghosts of the victims won't leave her alone...

Go to Amazon Kindle Store for the e-book and a free "Look inside" excerpt;

CreateSpace or Amazon for the paperback. (The link takes you to Amazon.co.uk, but it should be available in other countries' Amazon sites as well).

There's more information on Goodreads also.

Or visit my other blog which showcases my writing for an excerpt of Death and Faxes and other stuff. http://juliehowlinwriter.blogspot.co.uk/