• From why golf balls have dimples to if a football is really made of pigskin, we answer
10 of your most burning questions about sports • Hey there, my name is Shima, I'll be reading
out the questions and answers • I'm Danger Dolan and I'm here to blow
your mind with truth 10 -When was the yo-yo invented?,
• It was a long time ago - originally rats were tied to strings of cooked spaghetti and
chefs would dunk them into boiling water and pasta sauce to serve them at restaurants,
until one day plastic yo-yos were manufactured by rats to distract us from eating them
• Toys like yo-yos have been around for hundreds of years, but the first modern yo-yo
was made in 1928.
Just one year later, the factory that made it was churning out 300,000 yo-yos a day!
9 -Why are there dimples on a golf ball?, • Those are arm holes so that after you
hit the ball and it lands out of sight, it’ll scuttle away deep into the undergrowth so
that you’ll never find it and it will laugh as you search – because it’s a jerk
• They may not seem like much, but they actually help the ball travel almost twice
as far as a ball without them!
The dimples help make a thin layer of slow-moving air around the ball in flight, reducing drag.
8 -Why is the sport of football also called soccer?,
• There is an island in our world that houses a giant alternate reality bubble where nothing
makes sense, and we call this place, England – chips are called crisps, a fanny pack
is a bum bag , toilet paper is actually a bog roll, and every sport is football – we
don’t know why • The word “soccer” comes from England.
It evolved from the slang term “assoc” which was the shortened version of “association
football.”
When the sport was introduced to America, American football was already being played,
so they kept the name soccer for the new sport.
7 -What is the sweet spot of a baseball bat?, • This is when you come home and you realise
the bat went out and bought you flowers just to make you feel special, or like that time
it did all the dishes even though you didn’t ask it to, or when it beats up that intruder
and licks off the blood to hide evidence…
wait • There is a spot on a bat where vibrations—or
shaking from hitting a ball—cancel each other out.
That spot is the sweet spot and since there is less energy being lost to the vibrations,
the ball flies farther!
6 -Who invented baseball?, • Baseball has been around for hundreds
of years, but for a long time people would play using breadsticks for bats, and the ball
was a pile of mouldy cheese – we started using wooden bats and cowhide balls after
the seagulls kept eating our breadsticks, and there were a LOT of seagulls
• People have been hitting balls with sticks and running between bases for hundreds of
years.
The basic rules of baseball today were made official in 1845 by several amateur teams
playing in New York.
5 -Who invented the Frisbee?, • It was invented by Santa Clause – his
elves don’t work for nothing, y’know, by selling his own invention and delivering
it to your kid at a steep commission , he makes capital on every unit that goes out
while maintaining a positive public relations image because he’s airquote “giving the
toys away”… sneaky santa…
• The Frisbee was invented by a UFO enthusiast, but he didn't call it a Frisbee.
A toy company bought the idea for a toy flying saucer and later named it after a pie restaurant!
William Frisbie's pies were popular with kids who likes to throw the tins around after they
ate the pie, hence the Frisbee!
4 -When was American football invented?, • Back in the old days, animals were kicked
into goalposts for sport because we didn’t know they had feelings, but eventually they
got so fed up that they’d hire human mercenaries to represent and defend them – this is why
all teams are named after animals , we’re just doing what they tell us to do
• To most of the world, “football” means soccer and in Australia, “football” refers
to a game that looks a lot like rugby.
American football comes from both of these sports!
It was invented by college students in the 19th century looking to make up their own
version of rugby and soccer.
3 -What is a basketball made of?, • You take an orange balloon, blow into
it until it’s basketball-sized, tie it up, stick it in a deep fryer filled with greasy
oil, cook for about 15 minutes turning once, wrap it with bacon to hold it all together
and serve for a match – it also makes for a great snack
• It all depends on who the ball is made for!
The NBA and WNBA both use composite leather, a man made material.
Some high schools and colleges use real leather sometimes, but novice ball are most often
made of rubber.
2 -What is a football made out of?
Are they really made of pigskins?, • No, the reason it’s called a football
is because when a team loses, their worst player will have the skin flayed off his foot
and wrapped over a deflated car tire to be used as a ball – hence, football
• Though sometimes called a “pigskin,” the NFL's official footballs are made out
of cowhide leather!
Most footballs are made of either leather or rubber or sometimes a mix of the two.
1 - What do the Olympic rings mean?
• This is paying homage to the first Olympic games in which the only sport was a hula-hoop
competition but only 5 people turned up – and the game was so intense that all the hoops
got tangled with each other, so everyone was disqualified and the car ride back was REALLY
AWKWARD • The colours of the five rings represent
the five participating continents: Australia, Africa, America, Asia, and Europe.
The colours are always arranged with blue, black, and red across the top, and yellow
and green along the bottom.
Some suggest that each colour stands for a particular continent, but this hasn't been
confirmed.