97 Fun Facts About PE

How many players does each team have on the field in a game of soccer?

11. One of them must be the goalkeeper, and a side can lose players and carry on: a match is only abandoned when a team drops below seven.

What is the time a soccer referee adds to each half for delays called?

Stoppage time. Each half lasts 45 minutes on the clock, but the referee alone decides how much to add for injuries, substitutions and other delays, and the figure shown as the half runs out is only a minimum.

In basketball, which violation is called when a player moves with the ball without dribbling?

Travelling. The original 1891 rules were stricter still: a player could not run with the ball at all and had to throw it from the spot where it was caught.

Who invented basketball in December 1891 to keep his students busy indoors over winter?

James Naismith. Basketball was born in a Massachusetts gym, yet the instructor who wrote its thirteen rules was himself born in Canada.

The first basketball goals hung about 10 feet up on which part of a gym?

The balcony railing. It happened to be about 10 feet up, still the height of the rim today, and when spectators leaning over it began swatting shots away, backboards were added to stop them.

What did the first basketball players throw the ball into?

A peach basket. Its bottom was left in at first, so after every score someone had to fetch the ball back out by hand before play could go on.

In volleyball, which attacking hit usually finishes a team's three touches?

A spike. A side gets only three touches to send the ball back, so the classic pattern is a dig to control it, a set to place it and a spike smashed over the net.

Which sport was invented in 1895 as "Mintonette", a gentler alternative to basketball for older men?

Volleyball. At an early demonstration a professor remarked that the players were really just volleying the ball back and forth, and the new name replaced the inventor's own.

In baseball, what is a batter awarded after taking four pitches outside the strike zone?

A walk. Officially a base on balls, it once took nine wayward pitches to earn one; the count was cut in stages until it settled at four in 1889.

How long is a marathon?

26.2 miles. The odd figure dates from the 1908 London Olympics, where the course was reportedly stretched to start at Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal box; it became the standard in 1921.

In which modern country is Marathon, the ancient battlefield that gave the long-distance race its name?

Greece. In legend a messenger ran all the way from the battlefield to announce victory over the Persians in 490 BC, then dropped dead, and the race was created to honour the run.

What do the five Olympic rings represent?

The five continents. No ring stands for any one of them, though: the colours were chosen, with the flag's white, because every nation's flag of the day used at least one.

The Olympic motto, in English, begins with which three words?

Faster, Higher, Stronger. In Latin it is Citius, Altius, Fortius: the founder of the modern Games borrowed it from a priest friend's school sports, and in 2021 a fourth word was added, Together.

The Olympic torch relay from Olympia to the host city began at which Games?

Berlin 1936. The relay is no ancient custom: a flame first burned at an Olympic stadium only in 1928, and the run from Olympia was added for the Games held in Nazi Germany.

The ancient Olympic Games were held every four years at Olympia in honour of which god?

Zeus. The Games were part of his religious festival, and a sacred truce was proclaimed for them so that athletes and pilgrims could travel to Olympia in safety.

In which city were the first modern Olympic Games held in 1896?

Athens. Winners there received silver medals, not gold, and the first of them was an American, James Connolly, who took the triple jump on the opening day.

Which sporting venue takes its name from a Greek word meaning "naked"?

Gymnasium. Greek athletes trained without clothes, and their gymnasia doubled as places of learning, which is why the same word means a secondary school in German.

Which is the longest bone in the human body?

The femur. It is also the thickest bone, so it usually takes a serious trauma to break one, and from its length alone scientists can estimate how tall a person was.

Which single muscle is the largest in the human body?

The gluteus maximus. Its bulk is what holds the human trunk upright: other primates have much flatter hips and cannot stay standing erect for long.

The heart is a muscle about the size of what?

A closed fist. Like any muscle it responds to training: the hearts of endurance athletes who exercise for more than an hour a day often grow noticeably larger than normal.

What is a typical resting heart rate for an adult, in beats per minute?

About 72. Anything from 60 to 100 is normal for an adult, and a lower figure usually signals fitness: well-trained athletes can rest at 40 to 60 beats a minute.

Push-ups mainly work the triceps, the front of the shoulders and which other muscles?

Pectorals. These chest muscles push while the midsection holds the body rigid, and bringing the hands closer together makes the triceps work harder.

Swimming, jogging and cycling are classed as which kind of exercise?

Aerobic. The word means "requiring oxygen", and Air Force doctor Kenneth Cooper built "aerobics" on it for his 1968 fitness book, though he disliked the term and argued against using it as the title.

The 'beep test' run in PE classes worldwide has students shuttle back and forth over what distance?

20 metres. Devised by the Canadian researcher Luc Léger, the test keeps shortening the gap between beeps, and the level a runner reaches before dropping out gives an estimate of endurance.

Which US president founded a council on youth fitness after a study found American children far less fit than Europeans?

Dwight D. Eisenhower. More than half the American children tested had failed a simple strength-and-flexibility check that only about one European child in twelve failed, and the school fitness test grew from his council.

Which Olympic event's winner is traditionally called the "world's greatest athlete"?

The decathlon. The title goes back to 1912, when Sweden's King Gustav V is said to have told the winner, Jim Thorpe, that he was the greatest athlete in the world.

Which three sports make up a triathlon, in order?

Swim, bike, run. The sport grew out of a 1970s fitness craze: the first race to be called a triathlon, in San Diego in 1974, drew 46 entrants, and by 2000 it was an Olympic event.

In World Dodgeball Federation play, what brings an eliminated teammate back?

A catch. A clean catch pays twice, putting the thrower out as a teammate returns, but a fumbled attempt sends the catcher off instead.

Pickleball was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island in which US state?

Washington. A father improvised the game one summer afternoon for children who complained they were bored, and in 2022 the state made it its official sport.

What is the ball in pickleball made of?

Perforated plastic. The game was cobbled together from leftovers, so its first ball was simply a borrowed toy ball full of holes, hit across a badminton court.

In tennis, what is a score of zero called?

Love. Dictionaries trace it to the old phrase "playing for love", meaning for nothing instead of for money; the popular story that it comes from l'oeuf, French for egg, is only a theory.

When a set of tennis reaches six games all, what usually decides it?

A tiebreak. Until the 1970s a set simply ran on until someone led by two games, and where that rule survived, one Wimbledon set in 2010 finished 70-68.

The jump-rope game in which two ropes are turned in opposite directions is called what?

Double Dutch. After the Second World War it became the street game of New York City girls, played on pavements where mothers and neighbours could keep an eye on them.

Which is the fastest of the four competitive swimming strokes?

Front crawl. It is so much the quickest that in freestyle races, where swimmers may use any stroke they like, practically everyone swims crawl.

The butterfly stroke's leg movement, with both legs kicking together, is named after which animal?

Dolphin. The stroke began as a way round the rules: 1930s breaststrokers found they could swing their arms over the water, and it was made a stroke of its own only in the 1950s.

The term "hat-trick", now used for three goals in a game, began in which sport?

Cricket. The story goes that in 1858 a bowler took three wickets with three balls and was presented with a hat bought from a collection among the crowd.

Which sport, invented in 1968 by New Jersey high-school students, is traditionally played without referees?

Ultimate. Players call their own fouls under a code known as the spirit of the game, and argue a call only when they truly believe no foul took place.

How many holes are in a standard round of golf?

18. The number is an accident of one course: in 1764 the golfers of St Andrews merged several short holes, cutting their round from 22 to 18, and other clubs copied them.

What is a 300 score in ten-pin bowling called?

A perfect game. Every strike also counts the next two balls, so ten frames take twelve strikes in a row: one in each frame and two bonus balls in the last.

Which swimmer won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, beating Mark Spitz's seven from 1972?

Michael Phelps. He had chased the same target four years earlier and fallen short with six golds and two bronzes; he retired in 2016 with 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.

Which international body recommends that children aged 5 to 17 get at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day?

WHO. The World Health Organization also asks for muscle- and bone-strengthening activity at least three times a week, and estimates that four in five adolescents fall short of the target.

Which martial art, devised by a Japanese teacher in 1882, made its Olympic debut at Tokyo in 1964?

Judo. Its founder sat on the International Olympic Committee for years, yet after its home debut the sport was dropped from the very next Games before returning for good.

Which substance was long blamed, wrongly, for the muscle soreness felt a day or two after hard exercise?

Lactic acid. Muscles in fact burn it as fuel during hard effort, and it clears from the blood within about an hour, long before next-day soreness sets in.

Which 1972 US law gave girls the right to equal opportunity in school and college sport?

Title IX. Its text never mentions sport at all: it bans sex discrimination in any education programme that takes federal money, and its effect on athletics is what the law became best known for.

Which soft, flexible tissue forms the discs that cushion the bones of the spine?

Cartilage. A baby's skeleton starts out largely made of it, and through childhood most is slowly replaced by bone; what remains heals far more slowly than other tissue when damaged.

In an athletics relay race, what must each runner hand on to the next?

A baton. In the sprint relay it changes hands blind: the outgoing runner reaches back without looking, and the pass has to be made inside a marked 30-metre zone.

Which sports-day staple was an Olympic event at every Games from 1900 to 1920?

Tug of war. It counted as part of the track and field programme, with medals for club and police teams, until the Olympic programme was trimmed after 1920.

Which machine in almost every modern gym was introduced in 1818 to punish English prisoners?

The treadmill was engineer Sir William Cubitt's answer to idle convicts at Bury St Edmunds gaol: their climbing would cure laziness and do useful work.

The popular daily target of how many steps began as the name of a 1960s Japanese pedometer?

10,000 steps was a sales pitch before it was science: the manpokei, or 'ten-thousand step-meter', was a Japanese gadget of the mid-1960s. Studies suggest about 7,000 steps brings most of the health benefit.

Which Bee Gees hit, at about 103 beats a minute, is used to teach the rhythm of CPR?

Stayin' Alive falls inside the 100 to 120 compressions a minute that rescuers aim for. Trainees taught with the tune were found to remember their CPR skills better in the months afterwards.

Which dance did carmaker Henry Ford push until half of American schools taught it in PE by 1928?

Square dancing was Henry Ford's weapon against jazz, which he believed was corrupting America. He hoped a return to old-time steps and tunes would counter it.

Which film star chaired the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports from 1990 to 1993?

Arnold Schwarzenegger's spell as America's fitness chairman, under President George H. W. Bush, was his first political appointment. It came years before he was elected governor of California.

Which sports drink was developed in 1965 at the University of Florida for the school's own athletes?

Gatorade is named after the Florida Gators, the players it was first mixed for. Researcher Robert Cade's team wanted to replace the water, salts and carbohydrate the athletes lost on the field.

Which exercise, a side-straddle hop to the US military, shares its name with a string-pulled toy?

Jumping jack is also the name of a much older toy, a jointed figure whose limbs fly out when a string is pulled. One story has the exercise beginning at West Point in the 1880s.

Dick Fosbury won at the 1968 Olympics by going over the bar head first and backwards in which event?

High jump has never looked the same: nearly every jumper now uses the 'Fosbury flop'. Going over on your back only became safe once deep foam mats replaced sandpits.

Which PE game, known in most of Canada as soccer baseball, uses an inflated rubber ball and no bat?

Kickball spread through American schools in the 1920s because PE teachers found it a painless way to teach the basics of baseball, with no small hard ball to hit.

Which Games grew out of a 1948 contest for injured British veterans at Stoke Mandeville Hospital?

The Paralympics trace back to doctor Ludwig Guttmann, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who staged that first contest for patients with spinal injuries on the day the 1948 London Olympics opened.

The abdominal thrusts used to save a choking person are widely named after which American doctor?

Henry Heimlich, a chest surgeon, first described the technique in 1974. Many first-aid protocols now keep it as the last resort, after coughing and hard back slaps have failed.

In the first-aid acronym RICE, the first three letters mean rest, ice and compression; what is E?

Elevation completes the routine that sports doctor Gabe Mirkin introduced in 1978. The advice is no longer beyond question: there are concerns that resting and icing an injury may delay healing.

A sprained ankle, the most commonly occurring injury in sport, is damage to which kind of tissue?

A ligament is what a sprain damages, while a strain is the equivalent injury to a muscle. Ankle sprains happen mostly in ball games and racket sports.

Which tendon, the thickest in the human body, attaches the calf muscles to the heel bone?

Achilles has had his name on the tendon since at least 1693, when a Flemish anatomist used it in print. It can bear a load of 7.7 times body weight when a person runs.

A player who seems dazed or confused after a blow to the head should be checked for which injury?

A concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury, and a knockout is not required: fewer than 10% of children's sports concussions involve any loss of consciousness.

In the AED found on the walls of many gyms and schools, what does the letter D stand for?

Defibrillator is the D in automated external defibrillator. The machine checks the heart's rhythm by itself and gives spoken instructions, so a bystander with no training can use one.

Which addictive stimulant, best known from a related plant, also occurs in trace amounts in tomatoes and potatoes?

Nicotine, best known from tobacco, is the nightshade family's own pesticide: a nerve poison to insects that eat the leaves. Farmers once sprayed it widely on crops as an insecticide.

Which nutrient, which the body makes for itself in sunlight, is needed to absorb calcium from food?

Vitamin D is nicknamed the sunshine vitamin: ultraviolet light on bare skin lets the body make its own, so food has to supply it only when sunshine is scarce.

Bananas are famed for which mineral, though a serving supplies only around a tenth of the daily need?

Potassium is needed for nerves to carry their signals. The banana's reputation is larger than its contents, though: its level of the mineral is nothing special for a typical food serving.

Which hormone, made in the pancreas, lets the body's cells take up sugar from the blood?

Insulin takes its name from the Latin for 'island', after the islets of the pancreas where it is made. When the body makes too little, or stops responding to it, the result is diabetes.

At about 9 kilocalories a gram, which nutrient stores more than twice the energy of protein?

Fats are the body's densest fuel, which is why spare energy is banked that way. Protein and carbohydrate hold only about 4 kilocalories a gram.

Distance runners 'hit the wall' when their muscles and liver run out of which stored carbohydrate?

Glycogen is the body's ready reserve of glucose, and it is what endurance athletes are topping up when they 'carb-load' before a race. Cyclists call running out of it the bonk.

Which hormone, released by glands above the kidneys, drives the body's fight-or-flight response?

Adrenaline boosts blood flow to the muscles, steps up the heart's output and raises blood sugar, readying the body to sprint or to stand its ground.

Which protein in red blood cells carries oxygen from the lungs to the working muscles?

Haemoglobin is why endurance athletes train in the mountains: thin air can prompt the body to build up more of it, along with extra red blood cells.

The urge to gasp after holding your breath comes mainly from a build-up of which gas in the blood?

Carbon dioxide, rather than a shortage of oxygen, is what the body's breathing sensors mainly track. Under most conditions its level in the bloodstream sets how fast a person breathes.

Which organ, the largest in the human body, does most of the work of cooling an athlete down?

The skin makes up roughly 16% of body mass. Its sweat cools the body only as it evaporates, carrying heat away from the surface.

The elbow and the finger joints, which move in one plane only, belong to which class of joint?

Hinge joints swing one way and back, like a door. The knee is usually counted among them but is a less typical case, because it also allows a slight twist.

Subtracting a person's age from 220 gives a rough estimate of which figure used to plan training?

Maximum heart rate falls with age whatever a person's fitness, sex or diet, which is why age is subtracted. The formula is only a loose guide.

Body mass index, devised by Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet, sets weight against what?

Height, squared, is what the weight is divided by. Quetelet devised the sum between 1830 and 1850, and it has a blind spot in the gym: lean, muscular athletes often score misleadingly heavy.

The Illinois test, a timed run around cones starting face down, measures which part of fitness?

Agility is the ability to change direction at speed, and the Illinois course squeezes plenty of turns into a space just 10 metres long by 5 wide.

The legend of Milo of Croton, lifting a growing calf each day, illustrates which training principle?

Overload, or progressive overload, means asking a little more of the body each time. In the story the ancient Greek athlete ended up, four years on, hoisting a full-grown bull onto his shoulders.

Which workout style, named by coach Fred Wilt, began in the Soviet Union as the shock method?

Plyometrics was Wilt's coinage, made after the American watched Soviet track and field athletes prepare for their events. The original version was the work of scientist Yuri Verkhoshansky.

The plank and wall sit, where muscles work without the joint moving, are which type of exercise?

Isometric comes from the Greek for 'equal measure', because the muscle stays the same length as it works. A review of 270 trials found such holds beat other kinds of exercise at lowering blood pressure.

Which form of exercise, named from the Greek for 'beauty' and 'strength', relies on body weight?

Calisthenics is popular for its convenience: with little or no equipment needed, the push-ups, squats and pull-ups can be done almost anywhere.

Fartlek, a running workout mixing fast and slow bursts, means 'speed play' in which language?

Swedish coach Gösta Holmér devised fartlek in the 1930s for a national cross-country team that Paavo Nurmi and the Finns had beaten throughout the 1920s.

Which squat-thrust exercise is named after a physiologist who devised it in 1939 as a fitness test?

The burpee was Royal H. Burpee's doctoral project at Columbia University: a subject did four in a row, and heart rate readings before and after showed how fit they were.

Which workout format, devised at the University of Leeds in 1953, moves exercisers from one station to the next?

Circuit training builds both strength and muscular endurance, because one lap takes the exerciser through every exercise in the programme in turn.

The Borg scale, which runs from 6 to 20, asks people to rate what during exercise?

Perceived exertion is simply how hard the effort feels. The scale starts at 6 rather than 1 because the number roughly matches a resting heart rate of 60 beats a minute.

Which practice from ancient India takes its name from a Sanskrit word meaning 'to yoke' or 'to join'?

Yoga as taught in Western gyms is largely a modern blend of postures drawn from hatha yoga and Western physical culture. The traditional practice centred on meditation instead.

Which track race, named after a form of horse racing, includes 28 barriers and seven water jumps?

Steeplechase riders once raced across country from one church steeple to the next, and the runners' version kept the name. Its standard distance is 3,000 metres.

In 1954 Roger Bannister became the first runner to cover which distance in under four minutes?

One mile in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds was Bannister's time at Oxford's Iffley Road track, with two fellow runners setting the pace. Just 46 days later Australia's John Landy became the second man to do it.

Which team sport, first played by Indigenous nations, is North America's oldest organised sport?

Lacrosse grew out of games that Native American communities played as early as 1100 AD. Its world body is the only one in international sport to recognise First Nations and tribes as sovereign nations.

Which sport began in Chicago in 1887 with a boxing glove for a ball and a broom handle for a bat?

Softball's first game followed a thrown glove: a Yale alumnus tossed it at a Harvard supporter, and reporter George Hancock called for play with the glove tied up as the ball. It was at first an indoor game.

Which golf term for one under par on a hole was coined at New Jersey's Atlantic City Country Club?

Birdie, the story goes, dates from a round in which George Crump's first shot struck a bird in flight and his second stopped inches from the cup. His partners called it 'a bird' of a shot.

In ten-pin bowling, three strikes in a row are known by the name of which bird?

A turkey is three in a row, and bowlers call six in succession a wild turkey. Two strikes together are merely a double.

Which apparatus, built by gymnast George Nissen in 1936, went on to train pilots and astronauts?

Trampoline was Nissen's own name for it, taken from the Spanish word for a diving board. Bouncing on one gave wartime pilots and navigators practice at keeping their bearings in mid-air.

Which sport, created by a Dutch schoolteacher in 1902, has teams of four women and four men?

Korfball players shoot at a netless basket set on a pole 3.5 metres up. Schoolteacher Nico Broekhuysen created the game in the Netherlands, and it has since spread around the world.

Which sport, born of military navigation training, has racers find checkpoints by map and compass?

Orienteering is raced over unfamiliar terrain, and the map is specially prepared for the event, usually a detailed topographical one.

In a relay team, the final leg is usually given to the fastest member, who is known as what?

The anchor runs or swims last. A common order for a team of four is second-fastest, third-fastest, slowest, then fastest, though the job can also go to the most experienced.

In tennis, a legal serve that the receiver fails even to touch is known as what?

An ace wins the point outright. Most come on a first serve, when the server can hit with full force and aim for the far corners of the service box.