Friday, June 15, 2007

BOWLED OVER: A 100-WORD HISTORY LESSON

Few people know that the modern game of bowling traces its origins to the steppes of Central Asia. To the very court of Genghis Khan, in fact.

His Mongol hordes wreaked cruelty, death and destruction on all who resisted their sweep across Asia. It was after they leveled a particularly recalcitrant village that Genghis took the head of its chieftain - now detached from its body - and, holding it by the mouth and eye sockets, rolled it down a dusty alley, knocking over a pile of villagers’ bones.

But it was his grandson Kublai who invented the Bowling Shirt.

No comments: