Here at Spaceworks, we love working behind the scenes at major sports events, so that sports aficionados across the country can come and see their favourite sports stars in action.

Many of our sports and events are steeped in history, which, in turn, leads to us thinking about some quirky facts about these different sports.

Enjoy!

Have you ever wondered why tennis scored 15-30-45? This almost seems random compared to almost every other sport. The reason behind the scoring system can be traced back to medieval Europe, where monks developed a game called “real tennis” that eventually evolved into modern tennis. During that time, there was no standard way of keeping score, so the monks used a clock face as a scoring method. The clock face had numbers from 0 to 60, representing minutes. To simplify the scoring, they divided the clock face into quarters, with each quarter representing 15 minutes or points. This is why tennis scores are 15, 30, 40, and game.

Football is the most participated sport in the UK, and we all have our favourite team. But how old is YOUR club? The oldest football club in the entire world is Sheffield Football Club, which was founded in 1857.

The fastest goal ever scored in a professional football match happened in 2001, when Nawaf Al-Abed, a Saudi Arabian footballer, scored just two seconds after kick-off. Not a bad start, eh?

The 1904 Olympic Marathon in St Louis, USA was known for a number of reasons, none more so than the fact that the eventual winner, Thomas Hicks, was given a mixture of brandy and strychnine to help him finish. These were considered to be performance enhancers at the time!

The first perfect gymnastics score at the Olympics was achieved in 1976 at the Montreal Games by Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci. Even the electronic scoreboard was caught out, not being equipped to display a perfect 10!

These are just a few unusual facts from the world of sport, and we hope that you found them interesting. It certainly might help you at your next pub quiz!