41 Fascinating Sports Facts - mental_floss List Show Ep. 333 | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my beautiful salon. This is Mental Floss Video

And did you know that Olympic gold medals are 93% silver? Only about 1% is actual gold. The other 6% is copper

As you can probably tell from looking at me, I'm something of an expert in the world of sports

And that is the first of many interesting facts about sports I'm going to share with you today in this video, brought to you by our friends at Geico

Let's continue with a few more facts about the Olympics. During the 1928 Olympics, Australian Bobby Pierce was competing in the quarter-final

of the sculling event and he was winning by such a large margin that when a family of

ducks crossed his path, he stopped to let them go through. He then went on to win the gold in record time

Pole vaulting originated as a way for soldiers to get over tall enemy walls

It only became a sport centuries later. America's first Olympic gold medalist was a triple jumper named James Connolly

He was studying at Harvard at the time, but they wouldn't grant him a leave of absence

to attend the 1896 Olympics, so he dropped out to participate. Alright, golf

If the Masters tournament is short a golfer, a man named Jeff Knox is the official marker

who fills in. His score doesn't get counted, but he has beaten some of the competitors, including

Craig Stadler in 2003, Sergio Garcia in 2006, and Rory McIlroy in 2014

About 50% of the world's golf courses are located in the United States

However, golf is not just a game played on Earth. In 1971, astronaut Alan Shepard hit a couple golf balls while on the moon

Moving on to baseball, Major League Baseball umpires are told to wear black underwear in

case their pants split during a game. Every single ball played in Major League Baseball is rubbed in the same mud to break it in

The mud comes from a special location in New Jersey and costs for 8 ounces During a game in 1919 the Cleveland Indians pitcher Ray Caldwell was struck by lightning in the ninth inning He got up finished the game and the Indians won Hall of Famer John McGraw spent 15 weeks of his 1912 offseason going on tour with a vaudeville act

In fact, he was the highest-paid vaudeville performer for a time. Another Hall of Famer, pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm, hit a home run in his first-ever Major League Baseball at bat in 1952

He went on to play for 20 more seasons, but never hit a home run again

In the 1930s, a woman named Jackie Mitchell struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig

She was a pitcher for the AA Chattanooga Lookouts at the time and was only 17 years old

Okay, on to tennis. According to a study conducted at the University of Nebraska

when a tennis player grunts, it increases the ball's velocity by 4%

The first Wimbledon was in 1877, and the winner was a 27-year-old named Spencer Gore

After the game, he said, lawn tennis is a bit boring, it'll never catch on

Okay, onto American football. In over half the states in the U.S.

the highest paid public employee is a football coach. One website recently calculated the odds

that a high school football player makes it to the NFL. They determined that only .01% of players make it

and go on to last in the NFL for at least four years. Referees for the Super Bowl also get Super Bowl rings

Also, television is very important to the NFL. In the 1967 Super Bowl, NBC was still running commercials when the Packers kicked off for the second half, so officials decided to call a do-over

Similarly, there was a 1968 Jets-Raiders game that NBC stopped airing before the game ended to air the film Heidi at 7 p.m. sharp, and frankly, who can blame them? That's a great movie

The Jets were winning at the time, but the Raiders came back to win 43-32

which is why today games are always shown on TV until the end

The NFL hasn't had a scoreless game since 1943, when the Lions and Giants tied 0-0

During World War II football continued despite so many players serving in the military For this to work teams combined like the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers became the Stegals Game of Thrones author George R Martin is a Jets fan and he has called the Patriots the NFL Lannisters

I don't care who the Lannisters are. Who's Daenerys in the NFL? Who gets to rule the Dragons

Alright, let's finish up with some miscellaneous sports facts. Some athletes have had their retired numbers un-retired, like former Denver Broncos Frank Tripika had number 18 retired

before Peyton Manning used the number again in 2012. And Michael Jordan unretired his own number, 23, when he returned to play basketball for the Bulls

after his baseball career didn't work out and his attempt to wear the number 45 also didn't work out

In a 1945 soccer friendly between Arsenal and Dynamo Moscow, it was so foggy that the players could hardly see

At one point, the Arsenal goalkeeper ran into the goalpost and got knocked out

and reportedly a fan played goalkeeper for him for the rest of the game

Robert Vonnegut worked for Sports Illustrated in the 1950s. His time there ended when he

was assigned an article about a runaway racehorse. He wrote, "...the horse jumped over the f***ing fence and walked out.

In 1966, Roberta Gibb became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, albeit unofficially

According to Gibb, she skipped water stations, ate too much the night before, and wore a swimsuit

shorts, and men's running shoes. Plus, she'd arrived via bus from San Diego that same day

and she still finished 126th out of 500 runners. About half of the states in the United States don't have major league sports teams

The exact number changes because, you know, teams move. But, you know, if you're up there with your South Dakotas, your Idaho's, your Montana's, your Maine's

they're not going to move to you. Sylvester Stallone is in the International Boxing Hall of Fame for writing and acting in the Rocky movies

The Stanley Cup is named after Lord Stanley of Preston. He was a Canadian governor general who bought the trophy for 10 guineas, which is about $50 at the time

Speaking of trophies, in 1966, the World Cup's Jules Ramey trophy went missing before the game

A week later a dog named Pickles found it wrapped in a newspaper and it was returned Research has shown that home field advantage is real Things that help the home team are their fans a well field and the fact that they aren jet

When the inventor of disc golf died, he was cremated and his ashes were made into commemorative Frisbees

which you can still buy for $50. The inventors of another lesser-known sport, paintball, claim the sport was inspired by the short story

The Most Dangerous Game, in which people hunt each other. It might also have been inspired by, you know, 250,000 years of intra-human violence, but whatever

A 1939 cricket match between England and South Africa lasted 14 days

There's an amazing sport called chess boxing. The competitors alternate between chess and boxing

In the US, wrestling participation has declined by around 44% in just 10 years

Lacrosse and rugby playing, meanwhile, are increasing. When former University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith died in 2015

it was revealed that he left all of his former UNC players in his will

They each received $200 for a quote, nice dinner. Most professional sports leagues have a disaster draft plan in place in case the whole team

suffers an accident, like a plane crash. And in order to maintain weight during the Tour de France, cyclists need to eat between

6 and 9 thousand calories each day of the 23 day race

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that according to legend, the Huddle has

an inventor, Paul D. Hubbard, who played quarterback for Gallaudet University in the late 1800s

Like a lot of students at Gallaudet, he was deaf and didn't want the opposing team to

learn his hand signals, so he had his team join him in a circle to call the plays