The Weekday Ramble is a daily dose of sports, music, culture, and more from Rambling On founder Erik Ritland. For more information check us out on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or at our website.
Tuesday June 16, 2015
Today’s edition of our favorite feature, #FunFacts, covers a basketball milestone, McCartney the counter, and the quintessential Monty Python movie.
The theologian that created basketball
The first basketball game was played at Springfield College on December 21, 1891. The inventor of the game, Dr. John Naismith, hoped that it would boost morale among troubled the older youth at the local YMCA that were bored with kid’s games and calisthenics. He looked forward to “the time when Christian people would recognize the true value of athletics."
Paul McCartney, backwards counter
Don’t ask me why anybody would care enough to ask, but evidently Paul McCartney can count backwards from 2,000 to 1 really quickly. Like, unofficially faster than anyone in the world. File that under “weird enough to be noteworthy” (and possibly “made up because my source isn’t that great”).
Word ‘em up, John Cleese
The Black Knight scene is one of the most iconic in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. It was inspired by a story an elementary school teacher told John Cleese, in which one Roman soldier tapped out during a wrestling match only to find that his opponent had died. The moral of the story, that if you never quit then you can’t lose, rightly annoyed Cleese and the scene was his idea of mocking it. Well done, buddy.
Sources
http://www.sportyghost.com/top-10-interesting-fun-facts-basketball/
http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/most-shocking/top-10-little-known-facts-about-paul-mccartney/5/
http://mentalfloss.com/article/65207/15-facts-about-monty-python-and-holy-grail
Erik Ritland is a writer and musician from St. Paul, Minnesota. His blog and podcast Rambling On features commentary on music, sports, culture, and more. He was also Lead Staff Writer for Minnesota culture blog Curious North. Support Erik's music via his Patreon account, reach him via email, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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