Horseshoes

Horseshoes is an outdoor game played between two people (or two teams of two people) using four horseshoes and two stakes. The game is played by the players alternating turns tossing horseshoes at stakes in the ground, which are traditionally placed 40 feet (12.19 m) apart. more...

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Modern games use a more stylized U-shaped bar, about twice the size of an actual horseshoe.

History

In Greece and Rome, athletic contests and games of various kinds generally formed some part of religious observances and festivals. One of the four Grecian national festivals was the Olympian Games. These Grecian Games consisted of boxing, putting the weight, chariot races, archery, and discus throwing. The discus was similar in form to the modern quoit but not in size and weight. It was a circular plate of metal or stone 10- or 12 inches (300 mm) in diameter. It was pitched or thrown with a strap or thong passed through a circular hole in the center, the strap being released by the player as he swung it so the discus would go the greatest possible distance.

Iron plates or rings for shoes may have been nailed on horses' feet in Western Asia and Eastern Europe as early as the second century BC, though there is very little evidence for the nailed horseshoe prior to AD 600. Nonetheless, there is a theory that the camp followers of the Grecian armies, who could not afford the discus, took discarded horseshoes, set up a stake and began throwing horseshoes at it.

Horseshoe historians have been unable to discover when the game of quoits or horseshoes was changed so that it was pitched at two stakes, but it is pretty well established that horseshoe pitching had its origin in the game of quoits and that quoits is a modification of the old Grecian game of discus throwing.

Following the Revolutionary War, it was said by England's Duke of Wellington that "the War was won by pitchers of horse hardware." In 1869, England set up rules to govern the game. The distance between the stakes was 19 yards (17 m). The player stood level with the stake and delivered his quoit with his first step. There was no weight requirement but the outside diameter could not be more than eight inches (203 mm) . The ground around the stake was clay and all measurements for points were taken between the nearest parts of both quoit and stake. These became the rules under which the game was played in the United States but no tournaments were held or records kept until 1909. The game seemed to have been a favorite among soldiers in most wars. Returning home, these soldiers interested their home folks more than ever in the game and horseshoe pitching courts were laid out in hundreds of cities, villages, and farming communities. The impetus for the NHPA as we know it today grew out of the throwing of mule shoes in the Union Camps during the Civil War. Courts sprang up in the backyards of Union states. Rules differences arose regionally.

Read more at Wikipedia.org