sports trivia

» Until 1937, the refereee in basketball had to throw a jump ball after every basket.

» Until recently, a hockey goaltender never wore a mask. By 1959, Jacques Plante, an NHL All-Star goalie, had accumulated a hairline fracture and 200 stitches. Flying pucks had broken his jaw, both cheekbones, and his nose. Fibreglass Canada worked with Plante to develop the first-ever hockey goalie mask. While he was wearing the mask, his team, the Montreal Canadiens, won the Stanley cup for the third time.

» Up to 20,000 pounds of pressure per square inch may be absorbed by a pole vaulter on the joints of his tubular thigh bones when he lands.

» Using a graphite tennis racket reportedly helps prevent the onset of "tennis elbow."

» Hockey word play: The letters in the name Jaromir (as in Jaromir Jagr of the Pittsburgh Penguins), when rearranged, spells Mario, Jr. (as in Mario Lemieux).

» P.O.T.U.S Sports: U.S. President George Washington's favorite sport was fox hunting; Abraham Lincoln's was wrestling; Franklin D. Roosevelt's was swimming; John F. Kennedy's athletic passion was sailing; Richard M. Nixon's was football; and Ronald Reagan's favorite sport was horseback riding.

» A "tirailleur" is a sharpshooter.

» A 27-inch-high silver America's Cup holds no liquid – it is bottomless.

» A cowboy in a rodeo bull riding competition must hang on for eight seconds. The same applies to bareback-bronc and saddle-bronc events.

» A croquet ball weighs 1 pound.

» A female softball pitcher can throw the ball 70 miles per hour.

» A pro volleyball player can spike the ball at 80 miles per hour.

» A scrum is rugby's equivalent of a hockey face-off, except that it involves all those playing the position of forward on both teams.

» A sport practiced in ancient China consisted of placing two angry male quails in a large glass bowl and watching as the creatures clawed each other to death.

» A top fuel dragster can accelerate from 0 to 100 miles an hour in 0.8 of a second and from 0 to 330 miles an hour in 4.5 seconds, using 10 gallons of nitro-methane.

» A total of 602 athletes from the United States competed at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia in 2000.