Pixies Cakery: August 2014

Hockey: The roots of hockey are buried deep in antiquity. Historical records show that a crude form of hockey was played in Egypt 4,000 years ago, and in Ethiopia around 1,000 BC. Various museums offer evidence that a form of the game was played by Romans and Greeks, and by the Aztec Indians in South America several centuries before Columbus landed in the New World. The modern game of hockey evolved in England in the mid-18th century, primarily around schools.

Ice Hockey is believed to be an off-shoot of stick and ball games invented in the 1700s and 1800s in the United Kingdom. These games were brought to Canada and the United States and several similar winter games, such as "shinney" and "ice polo" using informal rules, developed. The first recognized recorded game resembling modern ice hockey was played indoors on March 3, 1875, in Montreal Canada, and several characteristics of that game such as the length of playing time, the length of the ice rink, the use of a puck and the dimensions of the goal have been retained to this day.

The professional ice hockey as we know it today originated around 1900 and was played for the first time in the Olympic Games of 1920.