Creative uses of Billiards Equipment - Don't try at home!

Recently I wrote a post on billiards balls following a news story on an ex-cup who smashed an office window using a billiard ball. Now I read about a gang who attacked another gang using pool cues and socks stuffed with billiards balls. What's wrong with you people!

Not that I support and/or encourage violence of any kind, however, this story inspired me again to write a post on the history of the cue stick.

Billiards games used to be played with a wooden mace, instead of the contemporary cue stick, until the beginning of the 17th century. First, the handle of the mace was used to remove the balls from the edges of the table. Later on, only the handle (queue in French) was used in billiards games.

Only two hundreds years later the leather cue tip was invented. The invention is credited to the French man Captain Mingaud. Thanks to Mingaud's invention, the cue ball control improved significantly.

Did you know?

• Women were not allowed to use cue sticks on the 17th century. They weren't to be trusted near the billiards table felt...
• Captain Mingaud had a billiard table in his prison cell.
  

Things you can do with a Billiard Ball...

A former Chicago policeman is charged for allegedly smashing an insurance office's window using a billiards ball. Even though today's billiard balls are no longer made of wood or ivory (today's billiard balls are composed of plastic composition like phenolic resin, polyester, acrylic etc), they can surely damage a window!

Billiard balls have a long and destructive history. At the beginning, they were made of wood, and the only thing they could damage was themselves. Let's just say that after a few games the balls didn't look much like balls and you could hardly tell the colored balls from the white ball.

Later on, billiard balls were made of ivory. It means that for every set of billiards balls you had to kill about 2-3 elephants. Not that the anyone cared about the elephants lives, the main problem was that the elephants' hunters lives were risked at the process.

Later on, a special composition called cellulose nitrate composed the billiard balls. Though its inventor, John Wesley Hyatt was induced to the Billiards Hall of Fame, the preparation of the billiards balls materials was explosive. Literally.



More on billiards balls history

All about billiards....

If you are fans of useless trivial information, like myself, you will enjoy reading this: an article about billiards' unknown facts.
Actually, some of this "unknown facts" did ring some bells, but maybe I'm not such as a good example...
Other facts, like the story about the first billiards female champion, I won't spoil you the surprise, but it is quite an amazing story.
The bottom line, if you are interested in billiards, history, or of you like to fill your head with trivial data and then pour it out in some boring dinner, you should read this.

Billiards (more or less) unknown facts