From information supplied by Bob Lanctot admin@ottadart.ca The National Capital Area Darts Page http://www.ottadart.ca/ Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Dartboards are made from compressed biscuits of African sisal.
Flights made of real turkey feathers are becoming harder to get because of unsatisfactory feathers due to an increasing demand for smaller turkeys.
The best wooden one-piece darts were manufactured by peasants in the Jura Mountains of Southern France.
Dart players in Philadelphia, Pa. (the home of American style darts) used to keep their dart points sticky by sticking them in potatoes.
The first man to sell matched sets of brass darts was a Hungarian salesman of boiler linings named Frank Lowy. He went on to found Unicorn darts, still the largest darts manufacturers in the world.
The strangest material ever suggested for making darts is spend uranium.
In tournament play:
- The longest time a player may be allowed between shooting individual darts is 3 minutes.
- A player is only allowed 9 practice darts (3 shots) before commencing a match.
- The maximum allowable weight and length for a dart is 12 inches and 50 grams.
In the British Dart Organisation (BDO), Indian Sikhs are exempt from the rule forbidding headgear.
In some very friendly games, a player is allowed to “double out” by throwing a dart into the space between the two wires comprising the numeral “11”.
Eric Bristow got his nickname “The Crafty Cockney” not from his accent, as some may think, but from a T-shirt he picked up in a California darts pub.
The legendary British dart player, Tom Barrett, was stone deaf for six months after being torpedoed on a convoy to Malta in 1942.
In 1984, John Lowe won over $200,000.00 for throwing the perfect 501 game (9 darts) on television. His scores were, 180-180-141 (T17, T18, D18).
Scotland’s former No. 1 dart player, Jocky Wilson, tossed a 24-dart 1001 leg against American Bud Trumbower in March of 1987 at the Eastgate U.S. Marine Base in England. His scores were: 180-140-140-140-81-100-120(out). Jocky scored a fantastic 600 points in his first 12 darts and doubled out with t20-20-d20 to average 41.7 per dart, start to finish.
On November 11, 1975 at the Broomfield WMC in Devon, England, international star, Cliff Inglis threw a 19-dart 1001, crushing all previous records to date. His scores were: 160-180-140-180-121-180-40(out). He averaged an incredible 52.68 points per dart in spite of having thrown wild on his first dart, hitting the double 20.
In May of 1987, Duncan Swift, of the Felixstowe Dock Sports and Social Club, Suffolk, England, scored 493,470 points to win the 24 hour solo record. While shooting and retrieving his own darts, he hit 123 180s, 643 140s and threw a total of 18,369 darts for an incredible average of 26.86 points per dart.
Probably the most notable event in the history of darts took place on October 13, 1984 in the quarter finals of the MFI World Matchplay Championships in a match between John Lowe and Keith Deller. Lowe threw the first televised nine-dart perfect 501 game: 180-180-141 (t17, t18, d18). He collected a cheque for 102,000 pounds for his feat. Ironically, due to complex tax laws, it was two years before he could collect his prize.
© Patrick Chaplin 2007
Dr Patrick Chaplin 