Page 40 - Sports Facts

The average attendance for Philadelphia Phillies games in 2009 was nearly 1,000 people above their park’s listed seating capacity!

Citizens Bank Park in Philly has a listed capacity of 43,651 people, though their media guide claims an estimated 3,000 additional fans may be accommodated through standing room. Amazingly, the average game attendance during the 2009 was 44,453 - the highest such figure in team history and 2,200 average fans greater than the previous season! This was for good reason also, seeing as the Phillies were the reigning World Series champions and led their division for the last four months of the season. Unfortunately, this home field advantage didn’t pay them many dividends during the ‘09 World Series, as Philadelphia dropped two of their three home games to the Yankees, by whom they were defeated 4 games to 2. 

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Only two players in NBA history have finished a season with 2,000 points and 600 assists prior to turning 23.

These two men would be Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Royals in 1960, and Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls this past season. Rose is in some pretty elite company, considering “the Big O” scored more points over his 14-year career than any other point guard in the history of the league. Perhaps even more amazing than just the feat itself is the inexperience both players had when they both achieved it. Robertson managed to do so in his rookie campaign, while Rose put up these numbers in just his third year! Unsurprisingly, both men took home Rookie of the Year honors in their first seasons, though Rose happens to be the youngest in NBA history to be named the league's Most Valuable Player. However, if Rose ever hopes to be considered a greater player than Robertson, he may have to up his game a bit - the year after Robertson achieved this rare feat, he became the ONLY player in NBA history to average a triple double (30.8 points, 11.4 assists, and 12.5 rebounds) over the course of a season!
Sources: (1, 2)

The Chicago Cubs recently played their first game in Fenway Park since the 1918 World Series.

Last weekend, the Cubs and the Red Sox played an interleague series at Fenway. Friday was the first time these two historic old baseball teams met up in major league baseball’s oldest stadium in over 90 years. It seems fitting that they would scheduled this historic series for apocalypse weekend. True to form, the Cubbies lost 15 to 5 on Friday as well as losing the series at Fenway.

Another fun fact: The Cubs’ last visit to Fenway in 1918 was also the last World Series win for the Red Sox before the “Curse of the Bambino”, an 86-year dry spell that went on until 2004 where the Red Sox failed to win the World Series. The Cubs have an even longer World Series losing streak (102 years!) that is still going today.
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An elephant was executed by hanging in 1916.

Charlie Sparks, the owner of a small-time circus called Sparks World Famous Shows, was touring the southern United States. Along for the trip was Mary, a 30-year-old pachyderm that Sparks claimed was the largest animal on Earth, could play the horn, had a .400 batting average, and could kill a man. It turns out only one of those was true.

The many witnesses of the following events offer various accounts of what happened on September 12, 1916, that fateful day when Sparks World Famous Shows came to Kingsport, Tennessee. For whatever reason, whether by mistake or malicious intent, Mary the elephant killed novice elephant handler, Red Eldridge. For her crimes, “Murderous Mary” was sentenced to be executed the next day.

After deciding that there was no way to produce enough electricity to electrocute Mary, Sparks decided instead to execute her with a public hanging. 2,500 people showed up to watch the elephant be hanged at the Clinchfield Railyards. She was so heavy that the chain around her neck snapped shortly after she died. They then buried her in a grave dug by a steam shovel.

Click here to read more about this bizarre story.

The largest known black hole has a mass of 18 billion Suns!

Located 3.5 billion light years away, this black hole is SO massive that it weighs six times as much as the previous record-holder and is contains about the same mass as a small galaxy! The gravitational field of the giant is so strong that it actually causes a smaller black hole with the mass of 100 million Suns to orbit it! At two points in every 12-year orbit, the smaller hole gets close enough to break through the matter on the outer edge of the larger hole, which causes an outburst that makes the surrounding quasar suddenly brighten. A quasar is a bright celestial object into which matter entering a black hole emits large amounts of radiation.
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