As late as 1993, high-tech paraphernalia like computers, printers and video games had a negligible effect on power usage. Today, it's estimated to account for more than 13 percent of a typical household energy budget. By 2020, it could be as much as 25 percent
Walter Payton had the flu when he broke the NFL record with 275 rushing yards when Chicago played Minn 11/20/77.
Corey Dillon broke this record in 2000 rushing for 278 yards Cincinnati vs Denver (10-22-2000)
The record was then broken by Jamal Lewis in 2003 (295), and again in 2007 by Adrian Peterson (296) against the San Diego (and LaDainian Tomlinson) amazingly in his rookie season.
A Cornish game hen is really just a young Cornish chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.
The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
Chess traces back to an Indian game called chaturanga, played around the 6th century CE, whose pieces represented the four divisions of an ancient army.
Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards, nearly a century before it became a video game giant.
The Golden Retriever was developed in the Scottish Highlands in the mid-1800s by Lord Tweedmouth (Dudley Marjoribanks). He wanted a gundog that could retrieve game across both rugged land and water.
The German Shorthaired Pointer was developed in 19th-century Germany as an all-purpose hunting dog that could point, retrieve on land and in water, and track wounded game, basically a hunting Swiss Army knife.
Pointing is when a hunting dog like the German Shorthaired Pointer freezes, often with one front paw lifted, and aims its nose at hidden game so the hunter knows exactly where the bird is.
The modern rules of soccer were written in 1863, when the Football Association was formed in London to standardize the game.
Professional soccer players often run about seven miles during a single 90-minute match.
Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single NBA game on March 2, 1962, a record that still stands.
Basketball debuted at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where games were played outdoors and the final was played in pouring rain.
Tennis developed from "jeu de paume," a French game where players hit the ball with the palm of their hand.
Table tennis began in Victorian England as an after-dinner game played with books as nets and champagne corks as balls.
Table tennis balls grew from 38mm to 40mm in 2000 to slow the game down and make it easier to watch on TV.
Japan's Hiroji Satoh won the 1952 world championship with a sponge-covered paddle, which changed the game.
Table tennis games changed from 21 points to 11 points in 2001.
Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings at Beni Hasan show people playing a game similar to field hockey thousands of years ago.
The story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 is a myth, created by a 1907 commission that wanted the game to have a purely American origin.
Cal Ripken Jr. played in 2,632 consecutive MLB games.
The writers of the 1908 song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" reportedly hadn't been to a baseball game when they wrote it.
MLB added a pitch clock in 2023, which shortened the average game.
The first college football game was played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869.
A Wall Street Journal analysis found that an average NFL game has only about 11 minutes of actual action.
Tokyo hosted the Summer Olympics in 1964 and 2021. The 2021 Games were delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, made famous by "The Big Bang Theory," was created by Sam Kass.
"Loves me, loves me not" is a game where people pull petals off a daisy.
The World Series of Poker started in 1970 at Binion's Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas, and Johnny Moss was voted its first champion.
In 2003, an amateur named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker Main Event and $2.5 million after qualifying through an $86 online tournament, sparking a nationwide poker boom.
The odds of being dealt a royal flush in five-card poker are 1 in 649,740.
There are 2,598,960 possible five-card hands from a standard 52-card deck.
The hole-card camera, which lets TV viewers see players' hidden cards, helped make poker a popular TV sport.
Texas Hold'em is believed to have started in Robstown, Texas, in the early 1900s, and the Texas Legislature officially recognized the town as its birthplace in 2007.
In 2017, an AI called Libratus from Carnegie Mellon University beat top professional poker players at no-limit Texas Hold'em.
The phrase "poker face" comes from poker players hiding their emotions so opponents can't read their hands.
World Series of Poker event winners receive a championship bracelet.
In 2019, an AI called Pluribus beat professional players in six-player poker games.
Mathematician Edward Thorp showed that card counting could beat blackjack in his 1962 book "Beat the Dealer."
The MIT Blackjack Team used card counting to win money from casinos, inspiring the book "Bringing Down the House" and the movie "21."
Card counting in blackjack isn't illegal, but casinos can ban players they suspect of doing it.
Blackjack got its name from an old bonus payout for a hand with the ace of spades and a black jack.
Blackjack descends from a game called "vingt-et-un," French for "twenty-one."
With perfect basic strategy, the house edge in blackjack can be as low as about 0.5%.
In most casinos, the blackjack dealer must hit on 16 or less and stand on 17 or more.
A natural blackjack traditionally pays 3 to 2, but some casinos pay only 6 to 5, which is worse for players.
Continuous shuffling machines make card counting in blackjack nearly impossible.
Taking insurance in blackjack is generally a bad bet for players.
Microsoft added Solitaire to Windows 3.0 in 1990 partly to help people learn to use a mouse by dragging and dropping cards.
Windows Solitaire was created by a Microsoft intern named Wes Cherry, who wasn't paid royalties for it.
Microsoft Solitaire was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2019.
The Klondike version of solitaire is named after the Klondike Gold Rush.
In the UK, solitaire is usually called "patience."
Susan Kare designed the card backs for Windows Solitaire.
Almost every FreeCell deal can be won, but deal #11982 among the original 32,000 Windows deals is unsolvable.
According to legend, Napoleon played solitaire while in exile.
Winning Windows Solitaire triggers the famous bouncing cards animation.
Studies suggest that about 82% of Klondike solitaire games are winnable with perfect play.
Harold Vanderbilt invented contract bridge in 1925 while on a cruise.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are avid bridge players.
Bridge players sit in partnerships named after compass directions: North-South and East-West.
President Dwight Eisenhower was an avid bridge player.
The odds of each of four bridge players being dealt all 13 cards of one suit are about 1 in 2.2 octillion.
The International Olympic Committee recognizes bridge as a "mind sport."
The Bermuda Bowl is the world championship of bridge.
Ely Culbertson popularized bridge in the 1930s.
In bridge, the declarer's partner lays their cards face up as the "dummy."
Bridge descends from whist.
Uno was invented in 1971 by Merle Robbins, a barber in Ohio.
Merle Robbins sold the rights to Uno for $50,000 plus royalties.
Mattel has owned Uno since 1992.
Stacking Draw Two cards isn't allowed in official Uno rules, which Mattel confirmed in 2019.
"Uno" means "one" in Spanish and Italian.
A standard Uno deck has 108 cards.
If you forget to say "Uno" when you have one card left and get caught, you have to draw two cards.
Mattel released a Braille version of Uno in 2017.
Uno Show 'Em No Mercy is a harsher version of Uno released in 2023.
In Uno, players can challenge a Wild Draw Four if they think it was played illegally.
Gin rummy is often said to have been invented in 1909 by Elwood Baker and his son.
Gin rummy was hugely popular in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s.
Rummikub, a tile game based on rummy, was invented by Ephraim Hertzano in the 1930s.
Indian rummy, played with 13 cards, is popular online.
In rummy, players make melds, which are sets of the same rank or runs in the same suit.
Rummy may have come from a Mexican game called conquian.
The name "gin rummy" is a pun on rum.
Canasta, a rummy-style game, was invented in Uruguay in 1939.
In gin rummy, "knocking" ends the hand.
India's Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that rummy is mainly a game of skill.
In Hearts, the goal is to score as few points as possible by avoiding hearts and the queen of spades.
In Hearts, "shooting the moon" means taking every heart and the queen of spades.
Microsoft added Hearts to Windows partly to show off its networking features.
The queen of spades, sometimes called "Black Maria," is worth 13 points in Hearts.
Hearts players pass three cards before each hand.
Hearts descends from an old game called Reversis.
Each Hearts hand has 26 points.
Hearts is usually played by four players.
In Omnibus Hearts, the jack of diamonds subtracts 10 points.
In Hearts, you usually can't lead a heart until hearts have been "broken."
Spades was developed in the US in the 1930s and became especially popular with soldiers during WWII.
In Spades, spades are always trump.
In Spades, bidding "nil" means betting you won't win any tricks.
Spades is a beloved part of African American culture.
In Spades, "bags" are extra tricks, and collecting too many costs points.
Spades is played with partners.
The ace of spades is fancy because England once printed a tax stamp on it.
Spades games are often played to 500 points.
In Spades, "reneging" means failing to follow suit when you could, and it comes with a penalty.
There are 13 tricks in each Spades hand.
English poet Sir John Suckling is credited with inventing cribbage in the 1600s.
A cribbage board from the WWII submarine USS Wahoo is passed down to the oldest active submarine in the US Navy.
The highest possible hand in cribbage is worth 29 points.
Cribbage is usually played to 121 points on a pegboard.
In cribbage, "muggins" lets a player claim points an opponent forgot to count.
In cribbage, a "19 hand" is a joke way to say a hand is worth zero, because 19 points is impossible.
"His nobs" is a jack in cribbage that earns a point.
In cribbage, "fifteen-two" means scoring two points for cards that add up to 15.
A "skunk" in cribbage means winning by a large margin.
The American Cribbage Congress organizes cribbage tournaments.
In Go Fish, players try to collect "books," or sets of four cards of the same rank.
Happy Families is a British card game similar to Go Fish.
Go Fish is usually played with two to six players.
In Go Fish, a player who doesn't have the requested card says "go fish," and the asker draws a card.
In Go Fish, players are usually dealt five or seven cards.
"Authors," a Go Fish-style game with famous writers on the cards, was published in 1861.
The four suits used in most standard decks come from France.
Jokers were added to American decks in the mid-1800s for the game Euchre.
A popular legend says the four kings represent David, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and Julius Caesar.
Playing cards were first used in China during the Tang dynasty in the 800s.
Magic: The Gathering was created in 1993 by Richard Garfield, a math professor.
Magic: The Gathering is made by Wizards of the Coast, which Hasbro bought in 1999.
Black Lotus cards have sold for more than $500,000.
A 2019 study proved that Magic: The Gathering is Turing complete, meaning it can simulate any computer program.
The Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour started in 1996.
Magic: The Gathering has five colors of magic.
There are more than 25,000 unique Magic: The Gathering cards.
Magic: The Gathering's Reserved List is a list of cards that will never be reprinted.
MTG Arena is the digital version of Magic: The Gathering, launched in 2019.
Universes Beyond is a Magic: The Gathering line of crossover sets with other franchises, including "The Lord of the Rings" in 2023.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game launched in Japan in 1996 and in the US in 1999.
In 2022, a Pikachu Illustrator card sold for about $5.3 million, setting a Guinness World Record.
More than 64 billion Pokémon cards had been produced as of 2024.
A first-edition "shadowless" Charizard is one of the most valuable Pokémon cards.
The Pokémon World Championships are held every year.
Target temporarily stopped selling Pokémon cards in stores in 2021 because of overwhelming demand.
Mitsuhiro Arita illustrated the original Charizard card.
Pokémon cards use Energy cards to power attacks.
Pokémon TCG Pocket is a mobile app version of the card game, launched in 2024.
A PSA 10 is the highest grade a trading card can get.
The 2014 movie "The Imitation Game" is about Alan Turing.
The first recorded Olympic Games were held in 776 BC, and athletes competed nude.