15th January 1892: Rules for basketball published for the first time by James Naismith

On 15 January, 1892, Naismith published his original list of thirteen rules in the Springfield College school newspaper, The Triangle. According to documents found after his death, these were inspired by a game he played as child called ‘duck on a rock’ and he was nervous about whether the game would catch on since he had previously introduced games that his students did not like.