The origin of basketball--and chance

[Arkham House]

Am I the only one who's ever reflected just how odd basketball is? Unlike all other major sports, there was no pre-history, no "development". Just one young man in a YMCA on a specific day in Springfield, Massahusetts, trying to find a way to keep other young men busy during the winter. And the rest, as they say, is history... What if James Naismith had never been born? Or even if he had been living in Hawaii or something in 1892? Would "basketball" exist today? One can see that the airplane would have existed one way or another without the Wright Brothers...and someone would have discovered relativity without Einstein, eventually... Nut basketball? How strange, that something so important to our world should be the result of one spark of inspiration, and almost certainly never have existed without that particular spark. Makes me wonder what other things that might transform the world are just "out there", waiting for someone--by no means a scientific genius, just someone--to discover them...