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History of Billiards

2007-06-09 16:38:33

All cue sports are generally regarded to have evolved into indoor games from outdoor stick-and-ball lawn games[2], and as such to be related to croquet and golf, and more distantly to the stickless bocce and bowling. The word "billiard" may have evolved from the French word billart, meaning "mace", an implement similar to a golf club, which was the forerunner to the modern cue. The term "cue sports" can be used to encompass the ancestral mace games, and even the modern cueless variants, such as finger pool, for historical reasons. Accordingly, in addition to the three general subdivisions listed earlier, a now rare obstacle category was prevalent in early times. The obstacle games (see illustration to the right, featuring a croquet-like variant), appear to have been the earliest,[citation needed] and include the obsolete bagatelle and pin pool among many other variations, some with elaborate structures (likely inspirational of miniature golf), and yet others on a sloped table (the ancestors of pinball), up to the relatively recent bumper pool (popular in the 1970s in home game rooms). The object of obstacle games varies from avoiding obstructions and traps, to hitting or passing through or into them on purpose to score, to using them strategically to score in some other way, such as by rebounding off them to reach a hole in the table or trapping opponents' balls.[citation needed] The early croquet-like games eventually led to the development of the carom or carambole billiards category — what most non-US and non-UK speakers mean by the word "billiards". These games, which once completely dominated the cue sports world but have declined markedly in most areas over the last few generations, are games played with three or sometimes four balls, on a table without holes (or obstructions in most cases, five-pins being an exception), in which the goal is generally to strike one object (target) ball with a cue ball, then have the cue ball rebound off of one or more of the cushions and strike a second ball. Variations include three-cushion, straight rail, balkline variants, cushion caroms, Italian five-pins, and four-ball, among others. Over time, a type of obstacle returned, originally as a hazard and later as a target, in the form of pockets, or holes partly cut into the table bed and partly into the cushions, leading to the rise of pocket billiards, especially "pool" games, popular around the world in forms such as eight-ball, nine-ball, straight pool and one-pocket amongst numerous others. The terms "pool" and "pocket billiards" are now virtually interchangeable, especially in the US. English billiards (what UK speakers almost invariably mean by the word "billiards") is a hybrid carom/pocket game, and as such is likely fairly close to the ancestral original pocket billiards outgrowth from eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century carom games.
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Billiards

2007-06-09 16:38:04

Illustration of a three ball pocket billiards game in early 19th century Tübingen, Germany, using a table much longer than the modern type.

Illustration of a three ball pocket billiards game in early 19th century Tübingen, Germany, using a table much longer than the modern type. Cue sports (sometimes spelled cuesports) are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber cushions. Historically, the umbrella term was billiards. While that familiar name is still employed by some as a generic label for all such games, the word's usage has splintered into more exclusive competing meanings among certain groups and geographic regions. For example, in the United Kingdom, "billiards" refers exclusively to a specific game, while in the United States it is sometimes used to refer to a particular game or class of games, or to all cue games in general, depending upon dialect and context. There are three major subdivisions of games within cue sports: 1) carom billiards, referring to games played on tables without pockets, including among others balkline and straight rail, cushion caroms, three-cushion billiards and artistic billiards; 2) pocket billiards (or "pool") generally played on a table with six pockets, including among others 8-ball (the world's most widely played cue sport), nine-ball, straight pool, one-pocket and bank pool; and 3) snooker, which while technically a pocket billiards game, is generally classified separately based on its historic divergence from other games, as well as a separate culture and terminology that characterize its play. More obscurely, there are games that make use of obstacles and targets, and table-top games played with disks instead of balls. Billiards has a long and rich history stretching from its inception in the 15th century; to the wrapping of the body of Mary, Queen of Scots in her billiard table cover in 1586; through its many mentions in the works of Shakespeare, including the the famous line "let us to billiards" in Antony and Cleopatra (1606-07); to the dome on Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello, which conceals a billiard room he hid, as billiards was illegal in Virginia at that time; and through the many famous enthusiasts of the sport including, Mozart, King Louis XIV of France, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, George Washington, Charles Dickens, George Custer, Theodore Roosevelt, Lewis Carroll, W.C. Fields, Babe Ruth, Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, and many others.
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History of baseball

2007-06-09 16:27:09

The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. While there has been general agreement that modern baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, the 2006 book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, argues against that notion.[1] Several references to "baseball" and "bat-and-ball" have been found in English and American documents of the early eighteenth century.[2] The earliest known description is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of boys playing "base-ball," showing a set-up roughly similar to the modern game, and a rhymed description of the sport. The earliest known unambiguous American discussion of "baseball" was published in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, statute that prohibited the playing of the game within 80 yards of the town's new meeting house.[3] The English novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball" on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, which was written between 1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818). The first full documentation of a baseball game in North America is Dr. Adam Ford's contemporary description of a game that took place in 1838 on June 4 (Militia Muster Day) in Beachville, Ontario, Canada; this report was related in an 1886 edition of Sporting Life magazine in a letter by former St. Marys, Ontario, resident Dr. Matthew Harris. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright of New York City led the codification of an early list of rules (the so-called Knickerbocker Rules), from which today's have evolved. He had also initiated the replacement of the soft ball used in rounders with a smaller hard ball.[4] While there are reports of Cartwright's club, the New York Knickerbockers, playing games in 1845, the game now recognized as the first in U.S. history to be officially recorded
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Analysis and Opinion

2007-06-09 14:15:35

An opinion is a person's ideas and thoughts towards something. It is an assessment, judgment or evaluation of something. An opinion is not a fact, because opinions are either not falsifiable, or the opinion has not been proven or verified. If it later becomes proven or verified, it is no longer an opinion, but a fact. In economics, philosophy, or other social sciences, analysis based on opinions is referred to as normative analysis (what ought to be), as opposed to positive analysis, which is based on scientific observation (what materially is). In mathematics and logic there can be no opinions about some claims, equations, and arguments, because often these kinds of statements are either valid or invalid, and true or false, and not open to contradicting opinions. Historically, the distinction of proven knowledge and opinion was articulated by some Ancient Greek philosophers. Plato's analogy of the divided line is a well-known illustration of the distinction between knowledge and opinion. Robert Webb, half of the Mitchell and Webb comedy duo, identified the phenomenon of idle opinion. Mitchell and Webb had come in for considerable criticism in the UK for their Apple Mac commercials, which contrasted the Mac with the PC. Webb noted that the vast bulk of the criticism happened during office hours, when people should have been doing their jobs. After 5pm each day, the criticism in blogs and Web chatrooms dried up. His conclusion is that idle opinion consists of views that people don't hold strongly, or indeed that they may not hold the view at all. 'Critics' just want to be part of a discussion, rather than do their daily grind.
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