Ball

The oldest extant soccer ball, circa 1540, was made of two oblong pieces of crudely-sewn leather. It was found stuffed behind paneling in the Stirling Castle bedroom of Bloody Queen Mary.

The first rugby balls were plum-shaped as they were made from pig bladders of that shape.

There are two golf balls on the Moon, both hit by Alan Shepard on February 6, 1971.

There is a disagreement about what color people say tennis balls are, with 52% saying green, 42% saying yellow and 6% saying "other"

Tennis balls were traditionally black or white. They were changed to yellow/green in 1972 after research showed they were more visible on television.

Wilson, the volleyball from the 2000 film Cast Away, won a Critic's Choice Award and an MTV movie award.

The most balls caught by a dog with its paws in one minute is 14. It was achieved by Purin the dog and her owner in Japan, in March 2015.

A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber.

A squash ball moving at 150 kilometers per hour (93 MPH) has about the same kinetic energy as a 0.22  bullet fired from a handgun. 

A table tennis ball, when dropped from 30cm (12 inches), should, by international rules, bounce 23cm (9 inches) high.

Ping pong balls aren't really hollow. They're filled with pressurized gas.

A cricket ball has between 65 and 70 stitches.

There are always 108 double stitches on a baseball, or 216 individual stitches.

A baseball

A baseball weighs between 5 and 5.25 ounces.

Major League baseballs have an average lifespan of just seven pitches and approximately 90 are used each game.

A colored baseball was used for the first time in any baseball game in 1938. The ball was yellow and was used between Columbia and Fordham Universities in New York City.

Richard Arndt, a part-time member of the Brewers grounds crew, caught Hank Aaron's 755th home run ball on July 20, 1976, The Brewers fired Arndt for keeping the ball, which they considered team property, and deducted $5 from his final paycheck. Arndt did eventually sell the ball at auction for $625,000 in 1999. Interestingly, he donated a quarter of the proceeds to Hank Aaron's Chasing the Dream Foundation.

Matt Murphy, the man who caught Barry Bonds' record-setting 756th home run ball, sold the ball for $752,467 and gave half to Amir Kamal, the friend he was at the game with.

The scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Morgan Freeman throws a baseball took over nine hours to shoot. Freeman didn’t complain once throughout the entire ordeal, showed up the next day with his arm in a sling, and continued shooting.

A baseball thrown at 90 mph has about the same kinetic energy as a 0.22 caliber bullet fired from a handgun.

The fastest moving ball in all of sports comes from Jai alai with speeds of the hard ball that can reach up to 188mph.

Mary Queen of Scots was a keen football player. The world's oldest football was found behind the panelling of her chamber in Stirling Castle. It's thought she may have lost it while playing with it as a child.

Soccer balls first got their famous black-and-white markings for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. It was believed that the black and white coloring would be easier to see on black and white televisions.

A regulation football is made up of 32 leather panels, held together by 642 stitches.

80% of soccer balls used across the globe are manufactured in Pakistan.

The hide from one cow can make 20 soccer footballs.

It takes 600 cows to make one full season’s worth of NFL footballs.

The home team must provide the referee with 24 footballs for each National Football League game.

Source GreatFacts.com, Daily Express