August 5th Major News Events

Born This Day In History August 5

Celebrating Birthdays Today

Neil Armstrong

Born: August 5, 1930 Wapakoneta, Ohio, U.S.

Died: August 25th, 2012, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.

Known For : Neil Armstrong is best known as the first person to set foot on the Moon at 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969. His picture and the immortal words "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." are shown around the world. He was the mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, On Landing Apollo 11 at 20:17:39 UTC on July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong informs NASA "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed", Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2½ hours exploring. Prior to his career as an astronaut he was a pilot in the United States Navy and saw action in the Korean War, he then became a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station. In the mid 1965 he was the Command Pilot for the Gemini 8. He holds a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California.

Dr. James Naismith With many sports, it's hard to trace an exact origin; ball games are fairly universal to cultures around the globe, and finding a specific inventor can be difficult to impossible. Basketball, on the other hand, does not have that same problem. The game millions watch today had its definite beginnings in the small town of Springfield, Massachusetts, in the mind of Dr. James Naismith. Naismith was a 30-year-old instructor at the local YMCA training school, and, in 1891 was tasked with coming up with an activity to be played indoors during winter, and given 14 days to do so. Naismith went through indoor versions of soccer, lacrosse and football, and they all failed (with the irony being all three of those sports would eventually have indoor versions), primarily because each try caused damage, particularly to windows. Naismith set out to create a game with less violence, one that was less a contest of strength and more a contest of skill. Late at night on the final before the final day of the two weeks he was given, he created a set of 13 rules for Basket Ball. He established many things still in use today, including the concept of "travelling," "goaltending," fouls, and even the rule that a ball must be thrown in-bounds within five seconds. He set up peach baskets attached to both ends of a gymnasium balcony, and used a soccer ball (using an "Association foot ball" was even part of his original rules). The name "Basket Ball" came from a student who first learned the game.

Growth Through YMCA Basketball's spread was helped a great deal by the YMCA itself; students who learned the game from Naismith took it across the country and even the world on Christian missions. Naismith himself taught the game in Springfield, in Denver at the YMCA there, and then at the University of Kansas, where he taught the game (as a teacher of physical education) from 1898 until shortly before his death in 1939. While Naismith's rules do not cover everything about the modern game, many aspects were picked up almost instantly; one of the key rules (the 3rd) said that no player could run with the ball, but did not introduce the concept of dribbling, fundamental to today's game. However, many of his players soon figured out that dribbling wasn't against Naismith's rules, and adopted it. Naismith himself liked the invention, and dribbling was made part of the official rules in 1898. Wooden backboards were added in 1896, while the number of players on the court was limited to five in 1900, after some games had gotten out of control, with reports of more than 50 people trying to play on the court at once. The game was also one of the first sports to be played by women as well as men; only 15 months elapsed between the invention of the game and the first women's game, played at Smith College in 1893.