Curated playlist
Individual sports
- SurfingIn July 1885, three Hawaiian princes rode redwood boards at Santa Cruz, California.
- ChessChess began in 7th-century India as chaturanga, a game whose four divisions mirrored an ancient army.
- Shot putParry O'Brien remade shot put in 1951 by starting his throw facing backward. He invented the glide.
- Swimming (sport)David Berkoff swam most of a 1988 Olympic backstroke race underwater. His dolphin kick broke a world record.
- YogaYoga, in the words of the scholar David Gordon White, has "a wider range of meanings than nearly any other word in the entire Sanskrit lexicon." That is a surprising claim about a word many people now link mainly to exercise. Yoga is a…
- Martial artsIn India, practitioners hid their fighting arts from colonial authorities by calling them dance.
- BoxingBoxing's modern rules were drafted by a British amateur in 1867. John Graham Chambers wrote them for a London event.
- Sport of athleticsAt the first Olympics in 776 BC, the only event was one sprint. That race, the stadion, grew into modern athletics.
- Go (game)In March 2016, top Go player Lee Sedol lost four of five games to the AlphaGo program. It learned by playing itself.
- BoomerangA returning boomerang works like a spinning wing that tilts itself into a curve.