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Billiards Trivia

Billiards Facts Trivia begins with the history of the game that is played by passionate players worldwide.

General Billiards Trivia

  1. The first game of billiards was played in the 15th Century.
  2. Shakespeare wrote of Billiards in his work Anthony and Cleopatra.
  3. Billiards was an outdoor sport played similar to Croquet in the 1300s.
  4. King Louis XI of France owned the first indoor Billiards table.
  5. Mary Queen of Scots was buried in her billiard table's cloth.
  6. 1689 was the first mention of pool hustlers.
  7. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would relax by playing a game of billiards.
  8. During the 1800s, Billiards was illegal in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson built his home to conceal a billiards room so he could play without worry of prosecution.
  9. Billiards was the first sport to have a World Championship in 1873.

Tables & Other Equipment
Billiards Facts Trivia

  1. Diameter size of Carom billiard balls is 2 7/16 inches.
  2. Diameter size of Snooker balls is 2 1/16 inches.
  3. Diameter size of American Pool balls is 2 1/4 inches.
  4. English Eight ball has unmarked balls in red or blue and yellow instead of striped balls.
  5. Billiard balls have been created out of clay, bakelite, celluloid, crystallite, ivory, plastic, steel and wood.
  6. Pool tables come in varying sizes: 7 ft., 8 ft., 9 ft. and older models in 10 ft.
  7. English billiard tables are 12 ft. and Carom tables are 10 ft.
  8. The first company to manufacture billiard table cloth was Iwan Simonis in 1453.
  9. For nearly 450 years, billiard table cloth was made from 100% worsted wool.
  10. Billiard cloth is typically green as a memorial to its ancestral lawn game, but now also comes in red and blue.

Championships
Billiards Facts Trivia

  1. The first 18.2 Balkline Championship was in 1913. The winner was decided by the French High Court.
  2. In the 1800s, American billiards was losing fanfare to Carom billiard sports. The first championship in 1878 went virtually unnoticed.
  3. The longest Championship winning streak of all sports is trick shot billiard player, Paul Gerni, winning 22 consecutive championships.

Famous Players
Billiards Facts Trivia

  1. In the 1890s, Frances Anderson proclaimed herself Champion of the World. Anderson toured the country and remained undefeated for 25 years against other female players. In the 1920s, she made a public announcement stating her real name was Orie and was a man.
  2. The ‘First Lady of Billiards' is Masako Katsura. Beginning her legacy in the 1950s, Katsura was the only Japanese female professional billiards player and the first woman ever to be included in any world billiards tournament.

Billiards Bits & Pieces
Billiards Facts Trivia

  1. Henry Louis won 46 championships using his nose instead of a cue stick.
  2. The fastest 300-point billiard match took only 35 minutes to play.
  3. With amputated hands, George Sutton won a National Balkline Billiards Championship.
  4. In the 1986 movie The Color of Money, Tom Cruise made all his own pool shots except for one.
  5. The movie The Hustler was based on a novel that the author based on a short story he had submitted to Playboy years earlier.

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