January 8, 1901

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Joel Byers

On This Date in TWISTED-HISTORY.com! in 1901, the first tournament sanctioned by the American Bowling Congress was held in Chicago, IL. The ‘rule’ of taking a drink every time your team made a strike was unanimously adopted without any debate.

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About Joel Byers

Born in North Georgia and educated at some very fine public institutions. Real education started after graduating from college and then getting married and raising two boys. Has the ability to see the funny and absurd in most things and will always remark on it, even if it means getting the stink-eye from his victims.
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One Response to January 8, 1901

  1. 1st American Bowling League says:
    January 11, 2014 at 6:02 pm

    I need to mention one minor point with regards to your fine article:

    Although it is true that there was no debate over the drink-when-your-team-gets-a-strike rule, there was actually a great deal of disagreement over the drinking rules in general.

    The initial rules called for drinking on every strike, spare, gutter ball, bathroom break and any score with the number ‘3’ in it. It immediately became obvious, however, that under these rules, everyone would quickly become too drunk to actually roll the ball. Unfortunately, at that point, someone suggested a take-a-drink-whenever-someone-is-too-drunk-to-roll-the-ball rule, then someone countered with a take-drink-whenever-someone-proposes-a-rule rule… and the whole thing pretty much dissolved into chaos.

    Somehow we got through it though and the glorious sport of Bowling was born!

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