12 Curious Facts About Table Tennis More than 100 years of Table Tennis History, and many stories to tell. We always talk about the champions along history, but now we present you some curious facts which have marked our sport. 1. Table Tennis was invented in 1888. In the first years it was played with balls made of rubber or cork, but the celluloid ball replaced them in 1900. 2. ITTF was founded in 1926 by 9 countries: Austria, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, India, Sweden and Wales. Curiously, India was the only Asian country. 3. The Corbillon Cup, awarded to the World Women Teams winner, was won by Germany in 1939, but unfortunately this disappeared during Berlin occupation after World War II. Later it was replaced by the German Federation. 4. The first time Table Tennis was played in China was in 1904. Wang Daoping, a shop owner, bought 10 tables from Japan, which were installed on his shop in Shanghai. 5. Table Tennis was created in England, Europe 1880, but the first Continental Association founded was South America in 1939. 6. Hiroji Satoh of Japan is the first player to win a World Championships using covered thick sponge and is the first non-European winner. He won the 1952 World Championships held in Bombay, India. 7. The 1st World Championships was held in 1926, but China just made its first appearance in 1953. Six years later Rong Guotuan was the first Chinese to win a world championships: the beginning of Chinese dominance. 8. In 1954 Ichiro Ogimura of Japan is the symbol of Japanese dominance with technological development and physical training. 9. Angelica Rozeanu-Adelstein of Romania won six world championships in a row (last one in 1955) and is the last non-Asian player to win a world women singles title until now. 10. Tomie Okawa of Japan was the first non-European player to win a world women title. She won the 1956 World Championships held in Tokyo, Japan. 11. Alojzy Ehlrich of Poland (world silver medalist) and Paneth Farkas of Romania played the longest rally ever in the 1936 World Championships held in Prague, Czechoslovakia. It was the first point of their match and lasted two hours and 12 minutes. According to Wikipedias information, Ehlrich won the point after Farkass arm began to freeze. After that point, the umpire had to be replace due to neck pain. This is not a curious fact, but a sad time in Ehlrichs life: during World War II, Ehrlich was caught by the Germans and was sent to Auschwitz. He spent four years there and later at Dachau, and was saved from the gas chamber because the Nazis recognised him as a world champion. 12. It is said that speed glue was discovered by accident in the 1970s. A player used bicycle puncture repair glue to fix his racket before a match. This revolutionized the sport, as we know, because speed and spin increased by up to 30%.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 08:13:58 +0000
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