National Bowling Day — 8 August

Let’s roll! The second Sunday in August means it’s National Bowling Day.

Question — do you know how to score a bowling game? Yes, you can only knock down 10 pins per frame. And there are only 10 frames per game. So how does a perfect score add up to 300? Answer: It’s more complicated than that. Strikes and spares have their own special (bonus) scoring system. And the 10th frame allows for one or two extra balls if you knock all the pins down.

Got that?

While it’s possible that bowling style games originated in ancient civilizations around the world, we likely can give credit to modern game of bowling to Germany. Kegels were placed at the end of an alley and Germans would roll a stone, attempting to knock them down (seriously, we looked this up). The motivation was that by knocking down the kegel, a person’s sins would be reconciled.

National Today News: New ‘Lebowski’ spinoff rolling on as National Bowling Day arrives