Where games and sports come from
Games and sports often outgrow their birthplace. Each story shows where a game or sport began and how it spread.
18 stories from 3 continents
- Asia · 3
- Europe · 10
- North America · 5
Gateball
📍 Memuro, Hokkaido, Japan
Gateball was dreamed up in 1947 in Memuro, Hokkaido, by Eiji Suzuki, who handmade sticks and balls so children short of toys after the war could play a croquet-like game. It later became a favourite of older people.
Judo
📍 Tokyo, Japan
Judo was created in Tokyo in 1882 by Kanō Jigorō, who reshaped older jujutsu styles around safe free sparring; strikes and weapons survive only in set forms. Its name means “gentle way”.
Playing cards
📍 China
Playing cards were most likely invented in Tang-dynasty China around the 9th century, helped by woodblock printing. They reached Europe much later, probably via Mamluk Egypt, by the 1370s.
Cribbage
📍 England
Cribbage grew out of noddy, an old English card game, and the poet Sir John Suckling is credited with inventing it in the early 1600s. Points are scored by moving pegs along a wooden board full of holes.
Dog agility
📍 London (Crufts at Olympia), England
Dog agility began as interval entertainment at the 1978 Crufts dog show in London, with dogs racing round a course modelled on horse show jumping. It became a proper competition at Crufts in 1980.
Korfball
📍 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Korfball was created in 1902 by Amsterdam teacher Nico Broekhuysen, who adapted ringboll, a Swedish game he'd seen in Nääs. Each team mixes four women and four men.
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Motocross
📍 Camberley, Surrey, England
The first known motocross race, then called a 'scramble', was run on Camberley Heath in Surrey, England, on 29 March 1924. The name motocross came later, blending French 'motocyclette' with 'cross-country'.
Netball
📍 London, England
Netball grew out of basketball at a women's PE college in Hampstead, London, from 1893, and its first rules were published in England in 1901. It then spread across the British Empire.
Parkour
📍 Lisses (near Paris), France
Parkour took shape in Lisses, near Paris, where David Belle and friends trained together. They called themselves the Yamakasi, from a Lingala phrase meaning “strong man, strong spirit”.
Pétanque
📍 La Ciotat, France
Pétanque was born in La Ciotat, near Marseille, around 1907–1910, when rheumatic player Jules Lenoir could no longer run before throwing. Its name comes from Provençal for “feet planted”.
Rugby league
📍 Huddersfield, England
Rugby league was born on 29 August 1895 at the George Hotel in Huddersfield, when 22 northern English clubs broke away so they could pay players for wages lost to Saturday matches.
Squash
📍 Harrow (London), England
Squash began around 1830 at Harrow School in London, when pupils noticed that a punctured ball, which “squashed” against the wall, made the old game of rackets far more varied.
Underwater hockey
📍 Southsea (Portsmouth), England
Divers of the Southsea Sub-Aqua Club in Portsmouth invented it in 1954 to stay fit through the winter. They called it Octopush: eight players a side, pushing the puck with a 'pusher' stick.
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Crossword puzzle
📍 New York City, USA
The modern crossword began as a “word-cross” by Liverpool-born journalist Arthur Wynne, printed in the New York World on 21 December 1913. Britain's first newspaper crossword followed only in 1924.
Pickleball
📍 Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA
Pickleball was invented in 1965 as a children's backyard game on Bainbridge Island, Washington, cobbled together from a badminton court, table-tennis paddles and a perforated plastic ball.
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Softball
📍 Chicago, USA
Softball began on Thanksgiving Day 1887 at Chicago's Farragut Boat Club, when a rolled-up boxing glove became the ball and a broom handle the bat.
Volleyball
📍 Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA
Volleyball was invented in 1895 by YMCA instructor William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as a gentler alternative to basketball. He first called it “mintonette”.
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Water skiing
📍 Lake City (Lake Pepin), Minnesota, USA
In 1922 Ralph Samuelson, aged 18, became the first recorded water skier, on Lake Pepin at Lake City, Minnesota. After trying barrel staves and snow skis, he made his own skis from pine boards and was towed by a motorboat.