Basic skills in billiards

Answer 1

Pool is one of the safest sports in the world.

According to research conducted a few years back, billiard champions have the highest average age of any sport, 35.6 years.

In 1586, the castle of Mary, Queen of Scots, was invaded and captured. The Invaders made a note of forbidding her the use of her billiard table. They then killed her, and used the covering of the table to cover her body.

The first coin-operated billiard table was patented in 1903. The cost of a game on the first pay-for-play table: one penny.

Before the invention of celluloid and other new-age plastics, billiard balls were made out of ivory. Billiard balls had to be cut from the dead centre of a tusk. The average tusk provided only 3 to 4 balls.

Throughout most of the 1800's, the chalk used on the new leather cue tips was carbonate of lime, better known as blackboard chalk. Most chalk used today is comprised of fine abrasives and does not contain a speck of chalk.

Billiards was the first sport to have a world championship (1873).

No one knows exactly who, when or where the first billiard table was built. The earliest documented record of a billiard table was made in 1470. In an inventory of the possessions of King Louis XI of France, his table was said to have contained the following: a bed of stone, a cloth covering, and a hole in the middle of the playing field, into which balls could be driven.

What is billiard cloth made of? Amazingly, the main component of billiard cloth has remained unchanged for over 400 years. Wool was used in the 1500's, and remains the fabric of choice today. It has, of course, undergone some perfecting (and some wool/nylon blends are also produced).

Tables originally had flat vertical walls for rails and their only function was to keep the balls from falling off. They resembled riverbanks and even used to be called "banks". Players discovered that balls could bounce off the rails and began deliberately aiming at them. Thus a "bank shot" is one in which a ball is made to rebound from a cushion as part of the shot.

The first woman who won in World Billiard Champion was actually a man.

The billiard game was outlawed for many years and in different countries: still at the early days of billiard, the game was accused of being immoral. Therefore, this faulty activity and its devoted players were chased by the Church. On the early history of American billiards, when the term "pool room" was still a synonym for horse betting parlour, the game was illegal in many states.