Many Happy Returns

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21242, 12 October 1940, Page 14 (Supplement)

Many Happy Returns

Sybil Shaw (12), October 12. James Hutson (11), October 13. Mona Robinson (16), October 14. Margaret Stevenson (16), October 14. Irene Turner (15), October 15. Olive Bethell (16), October 18. NEW MEMBERS Here’s a Welcome to:— Dorothy Greenfield (?), Hamilton. Don Peaibon (10), Karamu. Peggie Hansen (5), Orini. Who are this week’s new members. To Interest You HOW BADMINTON BEGAN A rainy day was responsible for the game of badminton that has become so popular in New Zealand during the last few years. It was first played in England about 70 years ago, but the people who played it then did not know it was badminton; they only knew they had invented a new game. Its name came afterwards. The people who invented it were guests of the Duke of Beaufort at ** house party at his country seat, Badminton, in Gloucester, and as it was a rainy day they were wondering what they could do to amuse themselves. Suddenly one of them had a bright idea. The children had been having a game of battledore and shuttlecock, so he decided the grown-ups could play it, too. So they began, but they played it differently from the children. They stretched a cord across the hall and played over this. They made up all sorts of rules as they went along and ended up by becoming the originators of a new game which proved .0 be very popular. British people going out to India :ook the new game with them and ieveloped it there. Proper rules were made for it and it became a jroper game. Later on it was reproduced into England and officially given the name of Badminton n honour of the Duke of Beaufort md his guests, who had such a jolly -ime inventing it on that rainy day • n Gloucester a few years before.