56 Fun Facts About YMCA

In which city was the Young Men's Christian Association founded?

London. Its first members were young workers who had come to the capital for jobs and lodged above the store, and they wanted somewhere to spend an evening other than the street and the tavern.

Who founded the YMCA with eleven friends?

George Williams. A farmer's son from Somerset, he was 22 when he gathered the group, and Queen Victoria knighted him in the association's fiftieth year.

What did the YMCA's founders first gather for in 1844?

Prayer. The founders were young city workers who met to pray and study the Bible as an alternative to the streets after hours, and the gyms the movement is known for came a generation later.

What was the trade of the YMCA's founder?

Draper. He worked for a city drapery firm whose assistants put in long days and slept above the shop, and he and eleven fellow drapers wanted a refuge from the streets outside.

Which sport was invented at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield in 1891?

Basketball. A young instructor was given two weeks to invent an indoor game for a restless winter class, and he pinned up 13 rules and split the 18 men into two teams of nine.

Who invented the game played at the Springfield YMCA in December 1891?

James Naismith, a physical educator who later qualified as a physician, devised the game for a restless winter class; he watched it debut as an Olympic sport at Berlin in 1936.

What served as the goals in the very first Springfield games of 1891?

Two peach baskets were nailed to the gymnasium balcony rail, 10 feet up; their bottoms were closed, so the ball had to be retrieved after every score.

William G. Morgan invented volleyball in 1895 at the YMCA in which Massachusetts city?

Holyoke: Morgan was physical director of the Holyoke YMCA and wanted a gentler indoor game for older businessmen, played over a raised net.

What did William G. Morgan originally call his new net game?

Mintonette was Morgan's original name; at an 1896 demonstration, Alfred Halstead suggested 'volley ball' after watching players volley the ball over the raised net.

Before it spread to Brazil, futsal was created in 1930 at a YMCA in which South American country?

Uruguay. Juan Carlos Ceriani devised it at the Montevideo YMCA so football could be played on indoor courts, in the very year his country hosted and won the first World Cup.

Joseph Sobek invented which sport on the handball courts of the Greenwich, Connecticut YMCA?

Racquetball. Sobek could not find squash partners at his level and did not care for handball, so he designed a short strung racket for the same court and called his game paddle rackets.

Which fitness term was coined by Robert J. Roberts, a 19th-century gym instructor at a Massachusetts YMCA?

Bodybuilding. Roberts replaced the heavy, risky gymnastics of his day with light dumbbell drills that anyone could follow, the forerunner of today's exercise classes.

Which youth organization did YMCA boys' work secretary Edgar M. Robinson help launch in 1910?

Boy Scouts of America. Publisher William Boyce had incorporated it but had little time to run it, so Robinson gave it a first headquarters in a New York YMCA office and recruited its national board.

In 1885 YMCA volunteer Sumner Dudley took seven boys to a lake and began America's oldest continuously running what?

Summer camp. It was not the first American camp, which dates to 1861, but the earlier ones closed; Dudley's week-long outing grew into one that outlasted them, and it took his name after his death.

Which worldwide organization grew out of a club that Ralph Smedley started at the Santa Ana, California YMCA in 1924?

Toastmasters International. Smedley, a YMCA education director, had started speaking clubs at earlier postings that faded when he moved on; the Santa Ana one took hold and still meets as Club No. 1.

Henry Dunant, a young Swiss YMCA secretary, went on to found which organization?

The Red Cross. What Dunant saw after the Battle of Solferino in 1859 moved him to call for a relief society for the wounded of any army; four years earlier he had joined the Paris meeting that linked the world's YMCAs.

World YMCA president J. R. Mott shared which honour in 1946?

Nobel Peace Prize. Mott shared it with Emily Greene Balch after decades of knitting student groups together across borders, and in the First World War he steered the YMCA into relief work for soldiers and prisoners of war.

The Paris Basis motto "That they all may be one" is taken from which Gospel?

John: the verse is John 17:21, from Jesus' prayer after the Last Supper, and it appears on the open Bible in the World Alliance emblem adopted in 1881.

According to Luther Gulick, the YMCA red triangle's three sides stand for which three things?

Mind, body and spirit. Gulick, who ran physical training at the YMCA's college in Springfield, drew the triangle to stand for the whole person, and in the First World War it became the badge of YMCA work with the troops.

Which group for travelling salesmen was founded at the Janesville, Wisconsin YMCA in 1899?

Gideons. Three men founded it as a fellowship of Christian commercial travellers, and the Bibles its members began leaving in hotel rooms nine years later made the name famous.

The first YMCA in North America opened in 1851, weeks before any in the United States, in which city?

Montreal. Its YMCA opened on 25 November 1851, yet Canadian branches stayed under a joint North American committee until they formed a national council of their own in 1912.

The first YMCA in the United States opened in December 1851 in which port city?

Boston. The branch began at the Old South Church, and the evening classes it later ran for working men grew into Northeastern University.

In 1853 the Reverend Anthony Bowen founded the first YMCA for African Americans in which city?

Washington, D.C. Bowen was born enslaved in Maryland and bought his own freedom, and the YMCA on the city's W Street still carries his name.

The YMCA Press in Paris printed the Russian edition of which Soviet dissident's history of the prison camps?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The press began by printing Russian books for refugees from the revolution, and its edition of The Gulag Archipelago carried a work that could not be published at home.

What were the 250 YMCA recreation centres opened for British troops in the first weeks of World War I called?

Huts. They gave soldiers food and a place to rest in camps and railway stations at home and close behind the front, and thousands of unpaid volunteers staffed them.

In World War II the YMCA helped found which body serving US troops?

The USO. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted private groups, not the army, to run off-duty recreation for the forces, so the YMCA and five other charities pooled their work under one name.

The YMCA grew into a worldwide movement founded on the principles of which Victorian ideal?

Muscular Christianity. The belief that sport builds moral character as well as fitness is why an association of young city workers went on to fill its buildings with gymnasiums and swimming pools.

Which Victorian social reformer presided over the YMCA through its first decades?

The Earl of Shaftesbury. He steered through Parliament the laws that took women and children out of the coal mines and, decades later, small boys out of chimneys.

Which 1851 event helped the YMCA spread beyond Britain?

The Great Exhibition. Visitors from abroad met the young association while in town for the fair, and within months YMCAs had opened in North America and across Europe.

The world YMCA's head office, now in the suburb of Vernier, was based for over a century in which Swiss city?

Geneva. The World Alliance was already running its relief for prisoners of war from the city in the First World War; the office has since moved out to Vernier, on Geneva's edge.

In Sweden's KFUM the M was redefined in 2011 as människor, meaning what?

People. Sweden's YMCA and YWCA had been one body since 1966, and in 2011 its national meeting voted to read the M as människor rather than män, men.

The Jerusalem YMCA, opened in 1933, was designed by an architect from the firm behind which New York skyscraper?

The Empire State Building. Arthur Loomis Harmon of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon designed the Jerusalem YMCA, which was dedicated as a place where political and religious rivalries could be set aside.

Which baseball league was founded by eight team owners meeting at a Kansas City YMCA in 1920?

Negro National League. Rube Foster of the Chicago American Giants led the meeting at the Paseo YMCA, and the league gave Black teams a stable schedule in the years white baseball shut them out.

A Canadian college named for the YMCA's founder, born from night courses at a local Y, became part of which institution?

Concordia University was formed in 1974 when the YMCA-rooted university named for the founder merged with Loyola College; Northeastern and Youngstown State also began as YMCA classes.

Which disco group released the song "Y.M.C.A." in 1978?

Village People released it in late 1978 as the lead single from their third album; the YMCA first threatened a trademark suit, then settled and embraced the song.

"Y.M.C.A." was the only single from which album?

Cruisin'. The title is a double entendre, nodding to gay cruising as well as driving around, in keeping with a group first aimed at disco's gay clubs.

"Y.M.C.A." stalled at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 behind "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" and which Chic song?

'Le Freak' returned to No. 1 in early 1979 and Rod Stewart's hit followed it there, so 'Y.M.C.A.' never topped the American chart, though it reached No. 1 in Britain and more than a dozen other countries.

On which TV show did the arm-spelling "Y.M.C.A." dance originate in January 1979?

American Bandstand: during the group's 6 January 1979 appearance, the studio audience raised their arms into a Y, and the band adopted the letters on the spot, as Randy Jones recalled.

In 2000, "Y.M.C.A." was chosen as a morning wake-up call for the crew aboard what?

A Space Shuttle. The song woke the Atlantis crew on mission STS-106, who spent a week unloading supplies so the new space station would be ready for its first residents.

Which lead singer co-wrote "Y.M.C.A." and later won a court ruling that removed a third credited writer?

Victor Willis, the group's original lead singer, wrote the lyrics with the producer; a 2015 court ruling struck Henri Belolo from the credits, and Willis has insisted the song was never a gay anthem.

Which French producer assembled the group and co-wrote "Y.M.C.A." with its lead singer?

Jacques Morali. He built the act around costumed macho characters to court disco's gay clubs, and it crossed over to the mainstream instead.

In which city's Sun Bowl was the 2008 record for the largest "Y.M.C.A." dance, with 40,148 dancers, set?

El Paso. Sun Bowl organisers staged the attempt at half-time with the group performing live, and the dancers were counted from the game's ticketing system.

For which brand was "Y.M.C.A." re-recorded in 1997 for a commercial with dancing bears?

Pepsi. The advert's grizzly bears danced to the tune with new words, spelling out P-E-P-S-I with their bodies in place of the four famous letters.

At which ballpark does the grounds crew pause mid-game to lead the crowd in the "Y.M.C.A." dance?

Yankee Stadium. The crew breaks off from smoothing the infield to do the arm moves, and in 2010 the bleacher regulars agreed to drop a mocking chant they used to sing over the chorus.

A 1979 cover of "Y.M.C.A." retitled "Young Man" topped the chart for five weeks in which country?

Japan. Hideki Saijo's version, with new Japanese words written to cheer on the young, became his best-selling single and has since been covered across Asia.

Which character did the lead singer on "Y.M.C.A." play in the group's costumed line-up?

Police officer. He also appeared as a naval officer, and each of the six played a stock macho figure, a casting idea the producers took from the gay clubs the act was first aimed at.

Which record label released "Y.M.C.A." in October 1978?

Casablanca. Neil Bogart's label rode the disco boom on two acts above all, Donna Summer and the six men behind this single, who he said kept its lights on.

Which sport, once played as kitten ball, got its lasting name in 1926 at the suggestion of a YMCA official?

Softball. The indoor offshoot of baseball had gone by kitten ball and a string of other names until Walter Hakanson proposed a single one, which was soon accepted across the country.

Which observance grew from the association Carter G. Woodson founded at a Chicago YMCA?

Black History Month. Woodson and his co-founders met at the Wabash Avenue YMCA, where he stayed on visits to the city, and the Negro History Week he launched in 1926 grew into the month.

Which songwriter's 1918 army revue Yip Yip Yaphank included a number about finding sunshine in the YMCA?

Irving Berlin. He wrote the revue as a soldier stationed at Yaphank, New York, at a time when the YMCA ran most of the army's recreation and welfare work.

Which future self-help author began teaching public speaking in night classes at a New York YMCA in 1912?

Dale Carnegie. He talked the YMCA into giving him a room to teach in for a share of the takings, and the classes grew into the course behind How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Which holiday did Sonora Dodd launch at the Spokane YMCA for the veteran who raised her?

Father's Day. Dodd heard a Mother's Day sermon and asked why fathers had no day of their own; hers, a widowed Civil War veteran, had brought up six children.

The YMCA of the USA began certifying instructors in which activity in 1959?

Scuba diving. The Y was training and carding divers years before PADI existed, and it kept the programme running until 2008.

Which Chicago philanthropist offered $25,000 to any city raising $75,000 for a Black YMCA?

Julius Rosenwald. The president of Sears, Roebuck announced the challenge in 1910, and it helped build 25 YMCAs that became anchors of Black city neighbourhoods.

James Yen, a YMCA worker among Chinese labourers in France, later led a mass campaign teaching what?

Reading and writing. Yen began by reading and writing letters for the labourers, then wrote a primer built on a short list of basic characters that grew into China's Mass Education Movement.

Which 1980 film told a made-up story of how the "Y.M.C.A." group came together?

Can't Stop the Music. A fictional account of how the six got together, it reached cinemas after disco had peaked and flopped, ending the group's run as a chart and arena act.