Some scientists say that bowling has existed since Egyptian times and that one of the earliest Egyptian pharaohs was uncovered with primitive bowling pins and balls in his tomb. Others dismiss these findings, but historians agree the sport has existed in some form or another since at least 300 AD in Germany. Needless to say, the sport has come a long way in the last millennia. In fact, it is now the most popular sport outside of soccer (football) worldwide and there’s even an active movement to make bowling an Olympic sport.

A Sport of Soldiers and Kings

The sport was referenced in writing for the first time when the English King Edward the III banned his troops from lawn bowling in order to prevent their being distracted from archery practice. While the game is now considered to be largely blue collar, Henry VIII is said to have been a fan of the game and used cannon balls in sport. Source

Evolution of An American Classic

Meanwhile, Germans continued playing a traditional outdoor version of the sport known as skittles, which used heavy balls to knock down small pins called skittles. This game served as the inspiration for the more popular modern forms of bowling, starting with ninepin, which was introduced in America in the colonial era. Unfortunately, the sport began being associated with gambling, workplace truancy, and crime, leading to its illegalization in many cities. In 1841, the entire state of Connecticut banned ninepin bowling, which some claim led to the invention of tenpin bowling by people who were circumventing the law. Others claim the game started earlier though and that it only gained popularity in the area due to the outlawing of the more common ninepin game. It is said that the wooden version of the modern bowling ball was invented on December 29, 1862, but it’s difficult to find more information on this claim than the date. Regardless, the first standardized rules for tenpin were undoubtedly established in New York City in September 9, 1895. Sources #1, #2 Image Via John McNab [Flickr]

Innovations Galore

In 1914, Brunswick improved the game switching out wooden balls with hard rubber balls. In 1936, bowling became a lot quicker and less expensive because the pinboys were replaced with semi-automatic pinsetters. In 1946, AMF created the first completely automatic pinsetter, which was soon replaced by a 1955 Brunswick model. The later versions of this machine are in operation in the majority of alleys today. The game’s popularity exploded in the U.S. in the 1970s after automatic scorer became commonplace in bowling alleys across the country. Because the scoring for bowling is somewhat complicated, bowlers before this invention came out had to have a somewhat detailed understanding of the game. Nowadays, casual bowlers, professionals and kids can all share the same lanes and not have to worry about the difficulties of keeping score. Source #1, #2 Image Via Hryck. [Flickr]

Scoring Is Harder Than It Sounds

I’m sure most of you know that in bowling, when you knock down a pin, you get a point for that pin. The confusion about scoring comes into play when the bowler gets a strike or a spare. When you get a strike, you get 10 points, plus the points for the next two balls thrown. When you get a spare, you get 10 points and the points for the next ball thrown. So, if you got a strike and then you get four pins and then six pins (a spare) and on your next frame you get one gutter ball and then one pin, you would get 20 points (10+4+6) for the strike, 10 points (4+6+0) for the spare and then 1 point for the open frame, for a total of 31 points for all three frames. In the last frame, if you get a strike, you get more balls. One reason the experts will still count their games by hand sometimes is that the pinsetter will occasionally knock down a pin that moved positions during play. The automatic scorer will often count these pins, but according to the official rules of the game, only pins that fall over on their own are supposed to be counted. If you happen to make strikes the entire game, you get 300 points for the twelve roll game. This is known as a perfect game. Source Image Via Roadsidepictures [Flickr]

Bowling Celebrities

While you may have laughed at the pathetic professionals in the movie King Pin, bowling celebrities, particularly in the 60’s were actually a big deal. In fact, the first athlete of any kind to receive a million dollar endorsement deal wasn’t a basketball or football player, but instead a bowler. Don Carter received this extraordinary deal in 1964 when he signed a multi-year deal with Ebonite International. In more modern times, there are still some notable celebrities in the sport, like Jeremy Sonnenfeld, who, in 1997, became the first person to ever roll three perfect games in a row in a three-game series. Also impressive was 2006’s 10 year-old star Chaz Dennis who was the youngest person in history to bowl a perfect game. Source

Controversy

With 1024 possible outcomes in a game of bowling, it is easy to see just how hard it is to achieve the perfect game. Still, a number of bowling purists claim that technology has been making this feat increasingly easy to accomplish. Changing materials in balls, synthetic lane materials, oiling machines that lay out the oiling patterns in ways that make it easier to hit the pins, have all made bowling increasingly easy. Reports of perfect scores have increased by several thousand percentage points between the 80s and today. As a result, these dedicated bowlers have developed a specific set of rules for what they call “sport bowling,” that makes the game more challenging, as it was in the 1970s. Source Image Via Johnathan Cohen [Flickr]

Terminology

Like all sports, bowling has its own jargon that can be difficult for non-bowlers to understand. In case you want to hold a conversation with some league players, here’s a few terms you may want to know (note the number of food-related terms, should bowling replace American football as the national Thanksgiving Day sport?):

-Bedposts: A 7-10 split -Dutch 200: A game where the player consistently alternates between strikes and spares, resulting in a score of exactly 200

-Goal posts: A 7-10 split -Golden turkey: Nine strikes in a row -Ham bone: Four strikes in a row -Six pack: Six strikes in a row -Thanksgiving turkey: A perfect game -Turkey: Three strikes in a row -Turkey sandwich: When someone gets a spare and then a turkey, followed by another spare -Wild turkey: Six strikes in a row

Source

The Healthy Side of Bowling

While most people have a less-than-athletic image of bowlers, the sport can actually be a good form of exercise and may help improve social relationships. Studies have shown it helps burn calories, regulates blood pressure and prevents osteoporosis and works muscle groups that are not normally exercised. Source Image Via calaggie [Flickr]

Seinfeld fans are sure to remember the Festivus episode starts with George giving cards to his co-workers that claims he made a donation on behalf to an imaginary charity. In a perfect example of life imitating art, Care4Less is now offering you the opportunity to make donations in the names of your loved ones to imaginary charities. The service doesn't cost a thing --except your integrity.

Link Via Consumerist

California man, Erik Estavillo, is suing Activision Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, for one million dollars because he claims the slow game pace is designed to take the player longer to get where he needs to go. He says the slow game pace is causing him anxiety, agoraphobia, depression and Crohn's Disease.

Lest you think that was the highlight of the suit, just wait until you hear the witnesses he is calling on his behalf: Winona Ryder and Martin Lee Gore, the founder of Depeche Mode. He thinks Winona's interest in Catcher In The Rye makes her qualified to discuss alienation and that Gore's songs make him an expert in alienation because he is "sad, lonely and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes."

Link

Zoos, or at least animal menageries, have been around since at least Roman times when exotic animals were collected for the purpose of being used in battles in the coliseum. During medieval times, the greatest zoo around was actually contained in the Tower of London. It was opened to the public for the first time during the reign of Elizabeth I.

During the 18^th century, guests could visit the zoo for only three half-pence, or they could come for free if they brought a dog or cat to feed to the lions. This animal collection was eventually moved into the world’s first official “zoo,” the London Zoological Gardens. Over the years, zoos have moved from being collections of caged animals designed to please the public to expansive parks dedicated to maintaining ecological diversity and conservation. While modern day zoos are mostly safe places where the public can go to see wild, exotic animals, this isn’t always the case. Here are some weird stories relating to modern zoos in honor of Visit The Zoo Day on December 27. Image Via www.theedinburghblog.com [Flickr]

Gaza’s Painted Donkeys

When the only two zebras in the Mara Land Zoo in Gaza Strip starved to death during the Israel-Hamas war, zoo officials knew they needed the popular creatures in order to entertain the crowds. Unfortunately, replacing the expensive attractions through the secret underground tunnels in the area was not an option for the financially strapped zoo. So keepers did what any good zoologists would do and just faked their zebra collection by painting donkeys to look like their stripped cousins.

To give them the dye jobs, zoo keepers used masking tape and black hair dye to create “authentic” stripping patterns on the creatures. While it may sound like a bad solution, many of the zoo’s young guests had never seen a real zebra and were equally impressed by the frauds. I guess it is still better to see a mock wild animal than no wild animals. Source Image Via Associated Press

The Loneliest Pig In the World

What’s exotic to one culture may just be a standard farm animal to another, as evidenced by Khanzir, the only known pig in all of Afghanistan. Because pork products are illegal in the country, the pig is a true rarity in the country, who received Khanzir as a gift from China. As if the poor pig wasn’t lonely enough grazing beside goats and deer, when fear of the swine flu hit the country, he was forced to spend his time in quarantine all by himself.

The zoo director, Mr Saqib explained the zoo’s decision to isolate the animal, despite the knowledge that it would not actually be able to infect the general public, "The only reason we moved him was because Afghan people don't have a lot of knowledge about swine flu, and so when they see a pig they get worried and think they will get ill." Mr. Saqib does have hopes to alleviate the pig’s loneliness though, he says after the swine flu concerns die down, he would like to get Khanzir a female companion. Perhaps then, poor little Khanzir could at least be a member of the only pig family in the country. Source #1, #2 Image Via BBC

In Case of Escaped Rhino…

If you’ve ever wondered how keepers prepare for the possibility of an animal escaping the zoo, you’re not alone. Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of the internet, a Japanese training session to get keepers prepared for a potential rhino escape has been caught on tape and made its way into your home. The “rhino” in this case is pretty darn terrifying, what with its eight legs and all. While the team’s efforts seem effective, you have to wonder if they would work nearly as well when the beast is actually 1 ton and angry as all heck.

Orangutan Escape

Perhaps those zoo keepers should have worked on their plans for escaped primates rather than escaped rhinos. A video seen on Animal Planet (sorry its not embedded, but they don't offer that service) demonstrates the terrifying things that happened when a four-hundred pound angry orangutan broke out of its cage and chased tourists and charged security guards. During his escapade in the outside world, Blacky also smashed some scooters and took control of a camera tripod hoping to use it as weapon against the guards who shot him with a tranquilizer dart. In the shot, you see just how long it takes for a huge animal to fall after getting shot with a tranquilizer dart --meaning the rhino training exercise certainly was optimistic about that part of the procedure.

Nuts About Knut

In nature, it is not uncommon for a mother to abandon her cub. Some environmentalists claim that the best thing to do in these situations is to let nature take its course and let the cub die off. But when the animal is already affected by human intervention because it lives in a zoo, it seems more than a little cold-hearted to just abandon the cub. Zookeeper Thomas Dörflein agreed, which is why he saved a two newborn polar bears that were abandoned by their mother.

One of the bears died of an infection within four days, but the other, Knut, was hand raised by Dörflein, who provided the cub with around-the-clock care. Only a few months into little Knut’s life, a German tabloid carried an article about Knut that featured a quote by animal rights activist Frank Albrecht, who said the bear should have been left to die rather than be subjected to a life as “a domestic pet.” The director of another local zoo agreed with Albrect and said that keepers should have “had the courage to let the bear die.”

To be fair, both of the people quoted said they were taken out of context and Dörflein has said that he was making a point about a German court's decision saying that it was OK for another zoo to have euthanized an abandoned cub in a similar situation. Naturally, animal lovers everywhere rallied in support of the little bear and the Berlin Zoo vowed to keep him alive and care for him. As a result of the controversy, Knut became a worldwide celebrity and videos of the little cub with his zookeeper were loaded onto YouTube for everyone to marvel at. His fame brought so many visitors to the zoo that it soon experienced its most profitable year out of its entire 163 year history.

As Knut grew older, he continued to be a popular attraction for visitors and he is still living at the zoo. Unfortunately, Dörflein died of a heart attack in 2008, although he remains a hero to many residents of Berlin.

Source Image Via Jean-Luc [Wikipedia Commons]

Human Exhibits

A long time ago (actually as recent as 1958 in Brussels), it wasn’t uncommon for humans of other races to be displayed in zoos alongside exotic animals. While racism in that time is not unusual, having people live in a zoo these days certainly is. But in 2007, the Adelaide Zoo in Australia ran a zoo exhibit where humans were housed in a former ape enclosure (they did get to go home at night). Inhabitants took part in a number of exercises and the amused onlookers were then asked for donations towards a new enclosure for a new exhibit for the chimpanzees.

Source

I've always thought there was something magical about the Pixar Studio's compound located in the San Francisco Bay Area, but getting to see these cool pictures of the inside just confirmed my wildest fantasies about how awesome it is. Imagine working at a place loaded with giant cartoon characters, free food, pool tables, video games and more.

http://topcultured.com/a-look-inside-pixar-studios-20-pics/

If you've ever wondered what the financial or ecological costs of a bottle of water really are, then check out this great infographic detailing the facts of bottled water. Some of the things are really interesting, like the fact that 40% of all bottled water companies just get their water from tap water.

Link

By now we all know a little about the Titanic, but HowStuffWorks has a great list of things that were lost on the famous ship, many of which were news to me. Perhaps the most interesting one is some of the lost artworks on the ship:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the wealth of many of its passengers, the Titanic was carrying a number of works of art, all of which were lost when the ship sank. The most spectacular of these was a jeweled copy of The Rubaiyat, a collection of about 1,000 poems by the 11th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam. The binding of this incredibly luxurious book contained 1,500 precious stones, each set in gold. It had been sold at auction in March 1912 to an American bidder for £405 or around $1,900 -- 15 years worth of wages for a junior crew member on the Titanic.

http://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/10-items-that-went-down-with-the-titanic.htm

By now we all know a little about the Titanic, but HowStuffWorks has a great list of things that were lost on the famous ship, many of which were news to me. Perhaps the most interesting one is some of the lost artworks on the ship:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the wealth of many of its passengers, the Titanic was carrying a number of works of art, all of which were lost when the ship sank. The most spectacular of these was a jeweled copy of The Rubaiyat, a collection of about 1,000 poems by the 11th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam. The binding of this incredibly luxurious book contained 1,500 precious stones, each set in gold. It had been sold at auction in March 1912 to an American bidder for £405 or around $1,900 -- 15 years worth of wages for a junior crew member on the Titanic.

http://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/10-items-that-went-down-with-the-titanic.htm

Since the Internet began, people have been sharing lists of the weirdest laws in the world, even so, I can't get enough of these absolutely inane rules. Elistmania has a great top 10 of these terrible laws, the best of which may just be "Single women can’t parachute on Sundays in Florida."

Why in the world would this be a law, and how could it be legal to discriminate like this in modern times?

For more silliness, see the rest of the list.

http://www.elistmania.com/juice/10_most_ridiculous_laws_from_around_the_world.aspx Image Via Bloomsberries [Flickr]

Urlesque has a great collection up of the "webbiest papercrafts" aka papercrafts made from internet memes. Personally, I love the two lol cat ones, but if you prefer hamster on a piano, keyboard cat or spaghetti monster the best, I wouldn't blame you.

Link

George W. Hart has brought us a milestone in breakfast-related math feats, the mobius strip bagel. Directions for making your own are on the link. The author says these are superior to regular bagels for non-math-related reasons as well.

It is much more fun to put cream cheese on these bagels than on an ordinary bagel. In additional to the intellectual stimulation, you get more cream cheese, because there is slightly more surface area.

Link Via Popurls

Around the world, people constantly have the drive to be immortalized in the Guinness Book of Records. Some try to fit the most billiard balls in their mouth, while others work together to make the world's largest food of its type. Web Urbanist has a collection of the later and the results are somehow both sickening and mouth-watering.

Link

Every year, Harrods holds a pet fashion show featuring stylish dogs paired with their fashionable model counterparts. The Pet Sugar slide show is fantastically entertaining.

Link

Touch screen iPhones and other gadgets are cool, but if you can't use them with gloves, you might just get way too cold depending on where you live. Fortunately, Instructables has a detailed set of instructions for making your gloves conductive so they can still work with your touch screen devices.

http://www.instructables.com/id/S3WDJU4G29ZFWRE/ Via Craftzine

Otters are fascinating species and the giant otter is no exception. These endangered critters are in serious danger of extinction, but veterinarian Lucy Spelman and other scientists are working to protect them. The process of rescuing these adorable animals is detailed on the Adventures in Climate Change website.

http://www.adventures-in-climate-change.com/adventures-in-climate-change/Saving_Otters/Saving_Otters.html Via Discovery News Image by Lucy Spelman