Game
Where does Pickleball come from?
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.
More Games & sports
Game
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.
Game
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.
Game
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”.
More from North America
Invention
Trampoline
📍 Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, USA
Iowa gymnast George Nissen and his coach Larry Griswold built the first modern trampoline in the mid-1930s, inspired by circus trapeze nets. Nissen named it after trampolín, Spanish for 'diving board'.
Word
Hurricane (the word)
📍 Caribbean (Taíno)
'Hurricane' is a Caribbean word: Spanish explorers borrowed huracán from the Taíno, an Arawakan-speaking people of the West Indies, and English took it from Spanish in the 1550s.
Food
Jerusalem artichoke
📍 Central North America
Neither from Jerusalem nor an artichoke: it's the tuber of a sunflower native to central North America. 'Jerusalem' is probably a garbling of girasole, Italian for sunflower.