9 August: Bowling

In 1926, National bowling day falls today. Here are ten facts about the sport of bowling.

1. Bowling dates back to ancient Egypt. Drawings of people playing a game similar to bowling and pins and balls have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to around 3,200 BCE.

2. In Germany in about 400 AD, bowling was a religious ritual. The pins were called keglers and represented the heathen. You could cleanse yourself from your sins by throwing rocks at them.

3. In England, the first mention of the game was in 1366 when King Edward III banned it. According to him, the plebs should be practising Archery. Henry VIII was a keen bowler, but he banned it too, at least for the lower classes, so it would be an elite sport for nobility only, as well as the same opinion that the plebs should stick to archery practice.

4. Bowling has been played with varying numbers of pins but the most common variation today is ten pins. Nine pins used to be popular in America but was banned everywhere except Texas because of the game’s association with gambling and crime. People got around the ban by adding the extra pin.

5. The largest bowling alley in the world is the Inazawa Grand Bowling Centre in Japan. It has 116 lanes.

6. If all pins are downed on the first roll, it’s called a strike. If you get them all in two, it’s a spare. The highest possible score for a single game is 300, achieved by rolling 12 consecutive strikes. However, even in a perfect game, the ball only hits four pins per roll and those four knock over the rest. A right handed bowler connects with the 1, 3, 5, and 9 pins (sometimes the 8) – and a left handed bowler will hit the 1, 2, 5, and 8 (sometimes the 9).

7. Abraham Lincoln was a keen bowler although contemporary accounts suggest he wasn’t very good at it, he 'played the game with great zest and spirit, solely for exercise and amusement'. Harry S Truman and Richard Nixon were keen enough players to have lanes installed in the White House.

8. The English Bowling Association was founded by cricketer WG Grace. In 2008, it merged with the English Women's Bowling Association to become Bowls England.

9. The game of bowling was seen for the first time on TV in 1950.

10. Bowling is played by 120 million people in more than 90 countries, including 70 million people in the USA alone.

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