Darts

Darts descends from a simple 19th-century pub pastime: English soldiers and drinkers throwing shortened arrows at the bottom of empty wine or beer barrels for sport. By the late 19th century, individual pubs had settled on their own informal throwing distances, and the game gradually moved from barrel bottoms to purpose-made circular boards mounted on walls.

The standard numbering layout -- arranged specifically to punish inaccuracy by placing high and low numbers next to each other around the board -- is popularly credited to a Lancashire carpenter named Brian Gamlin in 1896, though darts historians have been unable to find solid evidence he existed. The earliest confirmed printed record of the now-standard numbering sequence dates only to 1916, and some historians instead credit a Yorkshire craftsman, Thomas William Buckle, documented converting an earlier board design around 1913.

The distance from board to throwing line -- known as the oche -- is fixed today at 7 feet 9.25 inches for steel-tip darts, with the bullseye hung at 5 feet 8 inches, roughly eye level for a six-foot-tall player. A popular legend claims this distance came from stacking beer crates from a brewery called "S. Hockey and Sons," giving the line its old nickname, the "hockey."

The story doesn't hold up: darts historians and the Brewery History Society have both searched for records of any such brewery and found none. The more mundane truth is that individual pubs set their own throw distances informally for decades, and only later did governing bodies settle on the precise, standardized oche distance used in organized competition today.