Badminton

Badminton is a court or lawn game played with lightweight rackets and a shuttlecock, a small, cork hemisphere with 14 to 16 feathers attached and weighing about 80 grains (0.17-ounce [5 g]). A nylon shuttlecock with the apron furnished by feathers is also used. The game is named for Badminton, the country estate of the dukes of Beaufort in Gloucestershire, England, where it was first played in about 1873. It may have started much earlier in India. In the 1860s British army officers stationed there reportedly played the game out of doors and called it poona. Ultimately, badminton derives from an old children's game, battledore and shuttlecock. The ...