Sports

Games, athletes, and records — global games first.

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Sports Basketball

A basketball's bounce returns only about 75% of its drop height

75 sec read

Sports Combat Sports

A knockout is your brain twisting inside your skull

65 sec read

Sports Cricket

A cricket ball swings because one side is polished and one is rough

70 sec read

Sports Records & Statistics

A perfect 147 break is snooker's flawless maximum

70 sec read

Sports Football (Soccer)

A soccer ball's curve comes from a spinning air-pressure trick

75 sec read

Sports Extreme Sports

Alex Honnold climbed 3,000 feet of El Capitan with no rope

80 sec read

Sports Motorsport

Nobody is sure why the chequered flag means "finish"

80 sec read

Sports Records & Statistics

The scoreboard couldn't show Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10

70 sec read

Sports Motorsport

F1 brakes glow over 1,000C and stop a car in seconds

65 sec read

Sports Motorsport

An F1 car makes so much downforce it could, in theory, drive on the ceiling

90 sec read

Sports Athletics

Dick Fosbury cleared the bar backwards and rewrote the high jump

85 sec read

Sports Athletics

What limits human sprint speed isn't muscle power - it's time

85 sec read

Sports Motorsport

The winner of the Indianapolis 500 celebrates by drinking milk

80 sec read

Sports Football (Soccer)

The biggest crowd ever at a football match packed the Maracana in 1950

80 sec read

Sports Extreme Sports

Two climbers reached Everest's summit on lungs alone

75 sec read

Sports Olympics

Olympic gold medals are mostly silver

65 sec read

Sports Combat Sports

Pankration was the ancient Olympics' near no-holds-barred sport

80 sec read

Sports Tennis

Tennis counts 15, 30, 40 - and calls zero "love"

80 sec read

Sports Athletics

The javelin was redesigned because throwers got too good

65 sec read

Sports Football (Soccer)

The Maracanazo silenced 200,000 fans - and changed Brazil's jersey

70 sec read

Sports Tennis

The yellow tennis ball changed color for television

65 sec read

Sports Motorsport

At Le Mans, the winner is whoever drives furthest in 24 hours

45 sec read

Sports Olympics

The ancient Olympic Games ran for nearly twelve centuries

45 sec read

Sports Extreme Sports

BASE jumping is named after the four things you leap from

45 sec read

Sports Basketball

The basketball hoop has been 10 feet high since 1891 - by accident

45 sec read

Sports Records & Statistics

Cal Ripken Jr. played 2,632 straight games

45 sec read

Sports Cricket

An 'over' in cricket is six balls - and the ball barely changed in 400 years

45 sec read

Sports Cricket

Don Bradman's Test average was 99.94 - a duck from 100

45 sec read

Sports Records & Statistics

Edwin Moses won 122 races in a row over nearly a decade

45 sec read

Sports Motorsport

The fastest F1 pit stop changed four tyres in 1.80 seconds

50 sec read

Sports Tennis

The fastest tennis serve ever clocked at 263 km/h

40 sec read

Sports Extreme Sports

A skydiver once broke the sound barrier with his own body

40 sec read

Sports Basketball

The first basketball hoops had no hole in the bottom

45 sec read

Sports Football (Soccer)

The first football World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930

45 sec read

Sports Football (Soccer)

No two football pitches have to be the same size

40 sec read

Sports Tennis

The longest tennis match ran 11 hours over three days

40 sec read

Sports Records & Statistics

Jahangir Khan went 555 matches without losing

45 sec read

Sports Records & Statistics

Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 straight games

40 sec read

Sports Combat Sports

Kano Jigoro founded judo in 1882 from older jujitsu schools

45 sec read

Sports Extreme Sports

The largest wave ever surfed towered 86 feet at Nazare

50 sec read

Sports Cricket

Cricket has Laws, not rules - kept by one club at Lord's

45 sec read

Sports Combat Sports

The longest boxing match lasted 110 rounds over 7 hours

45 sec read

Sports Athletics

The marathon is 42.195 km because of a royal viewing box

45 sec read

Sports Olympics

A French baron revived the Olympics after 1,500 years

40 sec read

Sports Basketball

Basketball was invented in 1891 with two peach baskets

50 sec read

Sports Basketball

A stopwatch and a stripe reinvented basketball

50 sec read

Sports Football (Soccer)

Football's offside rule is as old as the game's first written laws

45 sec read

Sports Olympics

The Olympic motto came from a priest's school sports day

40 sec read

Sports Olympics

The Olympic rings hide the colours of every national flag

45 sec read

Sports Olympics

The Olympic torch relay was invented for the 1936 Berlin Games

45 sec read

Sports Combat Sports

The 1867 Queensberry rules turned prizefighting into modern boxing

45 sec read

Sports Athletics

Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile when many thought it impossible

45 sec read

Sports Combat Sports

Sumo grew out of Shinto ritual - and still performs it

45 sec read

Sports Tennis

The four Grand Slams are played on three different surfaces

45 sec read

Sports Tennis

Tennis went from wooden rackets to graphite in a single decade

45 sec read

Sports Cricket

A Test match can last five days - and one in 1939 ran twelve

50 sec read

Sports Cricket

The Ashes is a four-inch urn that has never been a trophy

45 sec read

Sports Athletics

Usain Bolt's 9.58 seconds is the fastest 100m ever run

45 sec read

Sports Football (Soccer)

"Soccer" is a British word, born from Oxford student slang

40 sec read

Sports Basketball

Wilt Chamberlain once scored 100 points in a single NBA game

45 sec read

◆ On this day

On this day in Sports

Browse all 17 by date →

25 Jan 1924

Sports Olympics

The first Winter Olympic Games open in Chamonix

50 sec read

25 Feb 1964

Sports Combat Sports

Cassius Clay beats Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title

40 sec read

3 Mar 1875

Sports Records & Statistics

The first organized indoor hockey game was played in Montreal

50 sec read

6 Apr 1896

Sports Olympics

The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens

45 sec read

8 Apr 1974

Sports Records & Statistics

Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's career home run record

45 sec read

17 May 1875

Sports Records & Statistics

The first Kentucky Derby is run, and Aristides gallops into history

40 sec read

30 May 1911

Sports Motorsport

The first Indianapolis 500 motor race is run

45 sec read

19 Jun 1846

Sports Records & Statistics

The first organized baseball match under the Knickerbocker rules

50 sec read

30 Jun 1859

Sports Extreme Sports

A daredevil walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls

50 sec read

8 Aug 2008

Sports Olympics

The Beijing Summer Olympics opened

40 sec read

8 Sep 1888

Sports Football (Soccer)

The first English Football League matches were played

45 sec read

30 Oct 1974

Sports Combat Sports

Ali shocked Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle"

50 sec read