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The answer to this is a little convoluted and the answer is just what is "believed" to have been the reason behind the scoring numbers, but since tennis is a game that dates back to the 19th century, it's tough to know for sure.
Anyway, here goes...
Think of a clock face that is divided up into quadrants - which would give you the 15, 30, 45, and 60 ...
34
The best explanation I could find of this is from Wikipedia:
The origins of the 15, 30, and 40 scores are believed to be medieval French. It is possible that a clock face was used on court, with a quarter move of the hand to indicate a score of 15, 30, and 45. When the hand moved to 60, the game was over. However, in order to ensure that the game could ...
24
There seems to be some debate on where the term started.
One common explanation is that it was adapted from the French word l'oeuf (pronounced "luff"), which means egg or zero. In American sports, we often use a similar term of goose egg to refer to a score of zero.
The Oxford Dictionary also believes that the term "Love" could have been adapted from the ...
24
Yes, this was the worst defeat of a host nation in the history of the world cup!
Other notable defeats are:
2010: South Africa 0 - 3 Uruguay
1958: Sweden 2 - 5 Brazil
Link: World Cup 2014: Most Lopsided Football Matches, Worst Host Defeat, Biggest Soccer Blowouts in History
22
This is going to depend a lot on the sport. In general, a reporter does have access to several resources, many of which are accessible to a dedicated fan, but when putting together commentary on the spot it helps a lot to have deep personal knowledge of the sport to consider what facts to research. (This kind of knowledge can be developed by a fan regularly ...
20
Messi had 50 goals in La Liga and another 14 goals in the Champions League, 3 goals in the Spanish Cup, 3 goals in the Spanish Supercup, 1 in the UEFA Super Cup and 2 in the Club World Cup.
Which makes 73 goals in total on 2011/2012.
Messi didn't break Dean's record but he has broken a lot of other records:
Most goals in one season in La Liga (previous ...
20
Jesse Owens was snubbed by who?
Everyone knows that at the 1936 Olympics Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens. As the story goes, after Owens won one gold medal, Hitler, incensed, stormed out of Olympic Stadium so he wouldn't have to congratulate Owens on his victory.
The facts are simple. Hitler did not congratulate Owens, but that day he didn't congratulate ...
19
American football is called football because of its origin. Its like soccer, can be traced back to rugby football where you use your feet to kick a ball at a goal or successfully carry a ball over a goal line. Over time, some rules were changed such as the concept of line of scrimmage and of four downs and a certain distance required to get more downs and, ...
19
I'm almost positive that this team (in red) are the Spokane Chiefs from the WHL. The jerseys match exactly along with the pants. I looked through the leagues of CHL, WHL, QMJHL and AHL and these were the only jerseys that match.
As you can see by the first picture below, the stripes on the jersey match up exactly. If you look in the original photo (with the ...
17
The 1976 Olympics are probably the closest example available. According to Wikipedia, Denver was originally scheduled to host the 1976 Winter Olympics:
The games were originally awarded to Denver in May 12, 1970, but a 300
percent rise in costs and worries about environmental impact led to
Colorado voters' rejection on November 7, 1972, by a 3 to 2 ...
16
I have heard of six being scored in extra time in the FA Cup fixture Leyton Orient v Droylesden, Orient scoring all six in winning 8 - 2.
This took place on 7 December 2010. There is a match report on the BBC: BBC NEWS
16
If instead of "European Championship" you mean the continental championship of the continent where the team is located (since it is not possible for any team outside of Europe to win the European championship) then the answer is:
Santos (Brazil) - 1962
Celtic (Scotland) - 1967
Englebert (DR Congo) - 1967
Cruz Azul (Mexico) - 1969
Ajax Amsterdam (Netherlands)...
16
Joe Gibbs, the former Washington Redskins coach (1981–1992, 2004-2007), is widely credited with making the phrase popular in a Washington Post article in 1982. Supposedly, he tried to use it to motivate his 1981 team that was off to a terrible 0-4 start and had the worst offensive efficiency in the league when inside their opponents' 20 yard line. The ...
15
Wikipedia says, "In the event of forfeiture, the score is recorded as "9 to 0", as per rule 2.00 of the Major League Baseball Rules Book."
The major league rules (page 16) state, "A FORFEITED GAME is a game declared ended by the umpire-in-chief in favor of the offended team by the score of 9 to 0, for violation of the rules."
As for the number 9 - it seems ...
15
Not all tracks are counter clockwise, The exceptions being the Australian version of NASCAR (AUSCAR) and horse racing is often run clockwise outside the US such as England(St Leger - wikipedia.), Continental Europe, Australia, and Hong Kong. also some of F1 races are clockwise like .
The decision to run horses counterclockwise in the US dates to the ...
15
Boxing has a win in 10 seconds via knockout, or instantly if the referee calls it.
15
Yes, the NFC West had all teams finish with a losing record in 2010. Wikipedia mentions this:
In 2010, the NFC West became the first division in NFL history to have a champion with a losing record, after the 2010 Seattle Seahawks won the division title with a record of 7-9.
I also found this heavy.com article that says the following regarding the ...
14
The distances were originally copied from three existing races. There was already a 2.4 mile swim race, and a bike race with a similar distance, and of course the marathon. The thought was "what if we did all three?"
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_Triathlon
14
I've also heard the story that the very first tennis players (we shall call them Adam and Eve) used a clock's minute hand to keep score (15, 30, 45). However, the clock was slightly broken and the hands were a bit loose. So when Eve went to set the score to 45, the hand slipped and fell back down to 40! And that has been the way they score tennis ever since.
14
There are several occasions where man of the match award has been shared by two players
Ravi Bopara and Suresh Raina :
http://crickethighlights.com/2011/09/suresh-raina-and-ravi-bopara-joint-men-of-the-match-ind-vs-eng-odi-4th/
Muralitharan and Ashraful : www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/image/187690.html
14
The following teams won a treble:
Celtic - 1967
Ajax - 1972
PSV - 1988
Manchester United - 1999
FC Barcelona (2) - 2009, 2015
Internazionale - 2010
Bayern München - 2013
14
6 times the defending champions were knocked out of the group stage (first group stage during the 1950 World Cup) in the FIFA World Cup history:
Italy - 1950
Brazil - 1966
France - 2002
Italy - 2010
Spain - 2014
Germany - 2018
References:
1, 2
Wikipedia: List of FIFA World Cup records (current revision)
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Wikipedia has a list of NFL win-loss records for each of the current 32 NFL teams. The tables on the page include all games that each team has played in, including regular season and playoffs. Sorted by win percentage, combining the regular season and post-season tables, through Super Bowl LI (2017), the best team is the Dallas Cowboys, with a win ...
13
You can use the BBC list of match reports for this. Arsenal v. Sunderland was one such example.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19221271
13
There are six people that have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
Gillis Grafström of Sweden is the most successful figure skater in Olympic history, having won 3 gold medals and 1 silver medal in 1920-1932. However, he is only on this list because in 1920, there was no Winter Olympics, and figure skating was an event in the Summer ...
13
Most sources, including the history presented on the website of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), agree that the game was developed in the 1880's as a variant to the already-popular lawn tennis, which in turn derives from so-called "real tennis", an earlier game, hailing back to medieval times, whose name is derived from French "Tenez!",
...
13
Looking at statistics of all world cup matches, this is the worst defeat of a host nation in world cup history in terms of "goal difference". This is also the worst defeat by a host nation in terms of "goals against" jointly with Switzerland (1954) 5-7 against Austria.
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Synchronised swimming was exclusively a women's sport from its first appearance at the World Aquatics Championships in 1973 until 2015 when mixed duet categories were introducted. The earlier (pre-1954) history of synchronised swimming does include male participation, but for many years it was a female only activity.
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As for the history of tennis scoring, there are two background stories:
That it has its origin in medieval numerology. The number 60 was considered to be a "good" or "complete" number back then, in about the same way you'd consider 100 to be a nice round figure today. The medieval version of tennis, therefore, was based on 60--the four points when 15, 30, ...
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